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V

1o-<rT\

BOHN'S CLASSICAL LIBRARY.

DIOGENES LAERTIUS.

THE

LIVES AND OPINIONS

OF

EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS

BT

DIOGENES LAERTIUS.

LmsBALLY tba:nslated

By C. D. TONGE, B.A.

LONDON:

HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

MDCCOLIII.

LONDON ; J. UADOON AND SOW, PRrNTSBS, CASTLB SiTRBBT, FIWSBITIY.

"^ UNIVERSITY O},

OF ""^

OXFORD «i

CONTENTS

Introduction

BOOK I.

PAOK.

Preface Thales Solon Chtlo

PiTTACUS

Bias

Cleobultjs

Pertander .

Anacharsis, the Scythian

Myson

Epimenides

Pherecydes

3 14 23 32 35 38 41 43 46 49 60 53

BOOK IL

Anaximander Anaximenes

57

57

VI

CONTENTS.

Abchelaus . socbates Zenophon . jEschines Abistippus . Phcedo . euclides Stilpo . Cbito Simon . Glauco

SlMIAS .

Cebes Menedemus

PAOX.

62

63

75

79

81

96

97

100

103

104

104

105

105

105

BOOK III.

Plato

113

BOOK IV.

Speusippus Xenocbates

POLEMO .

Gbates Cbantob Aboesilaus .

BlON

Lactdes

Cabneades

Clitomachds

152 154 158 160 161 163 171 176 177 179

	OONTESHTS.
	BOOK V.	PAOB.
Aristotle	• •	181
THEOPHRAflTUS	• • •	. 194
Strato	■ • •	202
Ltcon	• • •	. 205
Demetrius	• • •	209
Hebagudes •	• • •	. 218

yu

	BOOK VI.
Aktisthenes	♦	217
Diogenes	• • •	. 224
MONIMUS	• • •	248
Onesicritus .	t • •	. 249
Crates .	• • •	249
Metroci.es .	• • •	. 253
HlPPARCHIA	• • •	254
Menippus	• • •	. 256
Mekedemus	• • • BOOK VII.	257
Zeno	. • •	. 259
Artston .	• • ■	318
Herillus .	• . * *	. 320
DiONTSIUS	• • •	821
Clbantues .	. • •	. 322
Sph^.rus «	» • •	. 826
Chrysippus .	» • •	. 327

VUl

CONTENTS.

BOOK VIII.

Pythagoras

Empedocles

Epichahmtjs

Archytas

Alcmjeon

HiPPASUS

Philolaus

EUDOXUS

PAQS.

338 359 308 369 371 371 372 372

BOOK IX.

Heraclitus

Xenophanes

Parmenides

Melissus

Zeno, the Eleatig

Leucippus .

Democritus

Protagoras .

Diogenes, of Apollonia

Anaxarchus

Pyrrho .

TiMON

376 382 384 386 386 388 390 397 400 400 402 420

/

/

BOOK X.

Epicurus

424

PEEFACE.

Diogenes, the author of the following work, was a native (as is generally believed) of Laerte, in Cilicia, from whieb circumstance he derived the cognomen of Laertius. Little is known of him personally, nor is even the age in which he lived very clearly ascertained. But as Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, and Satuminus are among the writers whom he quotes, he is generally believed to have lived near the end of the second century of our era : although some place him in the time of Alexander Severus, and others as late as Constantine. . His work consists of ten books, variously called : The Lives of Philosophers, A History of Philosophy, and The Lives of Sophists. From internal evidence (iii. 47, 29), we learn that he wrote it for a noble lady (according to some, Arria ; according to others, Julia, the Empress of Severus), who occupied herself with the study of philosophy, and es- pecially of Plato.

Diogenes Laertius divides the philosophy of the Greeks iftto the Ionic, beginning with Anaximander, and ending with Theophrastus (in which class, he includes the Socratic philo- sophy and all its various ramifications) ; and the Italian, beginning with Pythagoras, and ending with Epicurus, in which he includes the Eleatics, as also Heraclitus and the Sceptics. From the minute consideration which he devotes to Epicurus and his system, it has been supposed that he himself belonged to that school. His work is the chief source of information we possess

2 PREFACE.

concerning the hi8tx>r7 of Greek philosophy, and .is the foundation of nearly all the modem treatises on that suh- ject ; some of the most important of which are little more than translations or amplifications of it. It is valuahle, as containing a copious collection of anecdotes illustratiye of the life and manners of the Greeks ; but he has not always been yery careful in his selection, and in some parts there is a confusion in his statements that makes them scarcely intelligible. These faults have led some critics to consider the work as it now exists merely a mutilated abridgment of the original. Breslseus, who in the thirteenth century, wrote a Treatise on the Lives and Manners of the Philosophers, quotes many anecdotes and sayings, which seem to be de- rived from Diogenes, but which are not to be found in. our present text ; whence Schneider concludes that he had a very different and far more complete copy than has come down to us.

The text used in the following translation is chiefly that of Huebner, as published at Leipsic, a.d. 1828.

LIVES AND OPINIONS

ov

EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.'

BOOK I.

»

INTRODUCTION.

I. Some say that the study of philosophy originated with the barbarians. In that among the Persians there existed the Magi,* and among the Babylonians or Assyrians the Chaldaei,! among the Indians the Gymnosophistae,! and among the Celts and Gauls men who were called Druids § and

* " The religion of the ancient Persians was the worship of fire or of the elements, in which fire was symbolical of the Deity. At a later period, in the time of the Qreeks, the ancient worship was changed into the adoration of the stars (Sabseism), especially of the sun and of the morning star. This religion was distinguished by a simple and majestic character. Its priests were called Magi" — T&MMmanii Mam/ital of the Higtory of PKHwophy^ Jnlrod, § 70.

+ " The Chaldeans were devoted to the worship of the stars and to astrology ; the nature of their climate and country disposing them to it. The worship of the stars was rerived by them and widely dissenli- nated even subsequently to the Christian era." — Ibid. § 71.

X " Cicero speaks of those who in India are accounted philosophers, living naked and enduring the greatest severity of winter without be- traying any feeling of pain, and displaying the same insensibility when exposal to the flames." — Ttuc. QnuBst v. 27.

§ " The religion of the Britons was one of the most considerable parts of their government, and the Druids who were their priests, pos- sessed great authority among them. Besides ministering at the altar, and directing all religious duties, they presided over the education of youth ; they possessed both the civil and criminal jurisdiction, they decided all controversies among states as well as among private persons, and whoever refused to submit to their decree was exposed to the most severe penalties. The sentence of excommunication was pronounced

B 2

4 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

§emnothei, as Aristotle relates in his book on Magic, and Sotion in the twenty-third book of his Succession of Philoso- phers. Besides those men there were the Phoenician Ochus, the Thracian ZamoWs,* and the Libyan Atlas. For the

against him ; he was forbidden access to the sacrifices of public worship ; he was debarred all intercourse with his fellow citizens even in the common affairs of life : his company was universally shunned as profane and dangerous, he was refused the protection of law, and deatii itself became an acceptable relief from "Uie misery and infamy to which he was exposed. Thus the bonds of government^ which were naturally loose among that rude and turbulent people, were happily corroborated by the terrors of their superstition.

** No species of superstition was ever more terrible than that of the Druids ; besides the several penalties which it was in the power of the ecclesiastics to inflict in this world, they inculcated the eternal trans- migration of souls, and thereby extended their authority as far as the fears of their timorous votaries. They practised their rites in dark groves or other secret recesses, and in order to throw a greater mystery over their religion, they communicated their doctrines only to the initiated, and strictly forbade the committing of them to writing, lest they should at any time be exposed to the examination of the profane and vulgar. Human sacrifices were practised among them ; the spoils of war were often devoted to their divinities, and they punished with the severest tortures whoever dared to ' secrete any part of the con- secrated offering. These treasures they kept secreted in woods and forests, secured by no other guard than the terrrors of their religion ; and their steady conquest over human avidity may be regarded as more signal than their prompting men to the most extraordinary and most violent efforts. No idolatrous worship ever attained such an ascendant over mankind as that of the ancient Gkiuls and Britons. And the Komans after their conquest, finding it impossible to reconcile those nations to the laws and institutions of their masters while it maintained its authority, were at last obliged to abolish it by penal statutes, a violence which had never in any other instance been resorted to by those tolerating conquerors." — Hume^a History of Englcmdf chap. 1. § 1.

* Zamolxis, or Ztdmoxis, so called from the bearnskin (^dX/ioc) in which he was wrapped as soon as he was bom, was a Getan, and a slave cf Pythagoras at Samos; having been emancipated by his master, he travelled into Egypt ; and on his return to his own country he introduced the ideas which he had acquired in his travels on the subject of civilisation, religion, and the immortality of the soul. He was made priest of the chief deity among the Qetas^ and was afterwards himself worshipped as a divine person. He was said to have lived in a subterraneous cavern for three years, and after that to have re-appeared among his countrymen. Herodotus, however, who records these stories (iv. 95), expresses his disbelief of them, placing him before the time of Pythagoras by many years, and seems to incline to the belief that he was an indigenous Getan deity.

INTRODUCTION. 5

Egyptians say that Vulcan was the son of Nilus, and that he was the author of philosophy, in which those who were especially eminent were called his priests and prophets.

II. From his age tp^that ef Alexander, king of the Mace- donians were forty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty- three years, and during this time there were three hundred and seventy-three eclipses of the sun, and eight hundred and thirty-two eclipses of the moon.

Again, from the time of the Magi, the first of whom was Zoroaster the Persian, to that of the fall of Troy, Hermodorus the Platonic philosopher, in his treatise on Mathematics, calculates that fifteen thousand years elapsed. But Xauthus the Lydian says that the passage of the Hellespont hy Xerxes took place six thousand years after the time of Zoroaster,* and that after him there was a regular succession

* " The real time of Zoroaster is, as may be supposed, very \m- certain, but he is said bj some eminent writers to have lived in the time of Darius Hystaspes; though others, apparently on better grounds, place him at a very far earlier date. He is not mentioned by Herodotus at all. His native country too is very uncertaitL Some writers, among whom sire Ctesias and Ammian, call him a Bactrian, while Porphyry speaks of him as a Chaldasan, and Pliny as a native of Proconnesus ;— Niebuhr considers him a purely mythical per- Bonage. The great and fundamental article of the system (of the Persian theology) was the celebrated doctrine of the two principles ; a bold and injudicious attempt of Eastern philosophy to reconcile the existence of moral and physical evil with the attributes of a benefi- cent Creator and governor of the world. The first and original being, in whom, or by whom the universe exists, is denominated, in the writ- ings of Zoroaster, Time wUhoiU htmiida. .... From either the blmd or the intelligent operation of this infinite Time, which bears but too near an afiGmity to the Chaos of the Greeks, the two secondary but active principles of the imiverse were from all eternity produced ; Ormusd and Ahriman, each of them possessed of the powers of creation, but each disposed by his invariable nature to exercise them with different designs ; the principle of good is eternally absorbed in light, the prin- ciple of evil is eternally buried in darkness. The wise benevolence of Ormusd formed man capable of virtue, and abundantly provided his fair habitation with the materials of happiness. By his vigilant provi- dence the motion of the planets, the order of the seasons, and the temperate mixture of the elements are preserved. But the maker of Ahriman has long since pierced Ormuad^s Egg^ or in other words, has violated the harmony of his works. Since that fatal irruption, the most minute articles of good and evil are intimately intermingled and agitated together; the rankest poisons' spring up among the most salutary plants ; deluges, earthquakes, and confla^utions attest the conflict of

C LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHBBS.

of Magi under tlie names of Ostanes and Astrampsychos and Gobryas and Fazatas, until the destruction of the Persian empire by Alexander.

III. But those who say this, ignorantly impute to the barbarians the merits of the Greeks, from whom not only all philosophy, but even the whole human race in reality originated. For Musaeus was bom among the Athenians, and Linus among the Thebans ; and they say that the former, who was the son of Eumolpus, was the first person who taught the system of the genealogy of the gods, and who invented the spheres ; and that he taught that all things originated in one thing, and when dissolved retmued to that same thing; and that he died at Phalerum, and that this epitaph was inscribed on his tomb : —

Phalerum's soil beneath this tomb contains MuBseus dead, Eumolpus' darling son.

And it is from the father of Musaeus that the family called EumolpidsB among the Athenians derive their name. They say too that Linus was the son of Mercury and the Muse Urania; and that he invented a system of Cosmogony, and of the motions of the sun and moon, and of the genera- tion of animals and fruits; and the following is the be- ginning of his poem.

There was a time when all the present world Uprose at once.

From w^hich Anaxagprais derived his theory, when he said that

nature, and the little world of man is perpetually shaken by yice and misfortune. While the rest of mankind are led away captives in the chains of their infernal enemy, the faithful Persian alone reserves his religious adoration for his friend and protector Ormusd, and fights under his banner of light, in the full confidence that he shall, in the last day, share the glory of his triumph. At that decisive period, the enlightened wisdom of goodness will render the power of Ormusd superior to the furious malice of his rival ; Ahriman and his followers, disarmed and subdued, will sink into their native darkness, and virtue will maintain the eternal peace and harmony of the universe. . . . . . As a legislator, Zoroaster '' discovered a liberal concern for the public and private happiness seldom to be foimd among the visionary schemes of superstition. Fasting and celibacy, the common means of purchasing the divine favour, he condemns with abhorrence, as a criminal rejection of the best gifts of Providence."— (?i66o», Decline and Fall of the Bomom Empire, c viii

INTRODUCTION. 7

all things had been produced at the same time, and that, then intellect bad come and arranged them all in order.

They say, moreover, that Linus died in Euboea, having been shot with an arrow by Apollo, and that this epitaph was set over him : —

The Theban Linus sleeps beneath this ground, Urania's son with fairest gai4ands crown'd.

IV. And thus did philosophy arise among the Greeks, and indeed its very name shows that it has no connection with the barbarians. But those who attribute its origin to them, intro- duce Orpheus the Thracian, and say that he was a philosopher, and the most ancient one of all. But if one ought to call a man who has said such things about the gods as he has said, a philosopher, I do not know what name one ought to give to him who has not scrupled to attribute all sorts of human feel- ings to the gods, and even such discreditable actions as are but raroly spoken of among men ; and tradition relates that he was murdered by women ; * but there is an inscription at Dium in Macedonia, saying that he was killed by lightning, and it runs thus : —

Here the bard buried by the Muses lies, The Thracian Orpheus of the golden lyre ;

Whom mighty Jove, the Sovereign of the skies. Removed from earth by his dread lightning's fire.

y. But they who say that philosophy had its rise among the barbarians, give also an account of the different systems prevailing among the various tribes. And they say that the Gymnosophists and the Druids philosophize, delivering their apophthegmns in enigmatical language, bidding men worship the gods and do no evil, and practise manly virtue.

♦ This IB the accoxmt given by Virgil —

' Spretse Ciconum quo munere matres Inter sacra Deilm noctumique orgia Bacohi, Discerptumlatos juvenemsparsere per agros. — QEOBO.iv.520.

Which Dryden translates —

The Thracian matrons who the youth accus'd, Of love disdain'd and marriage rites refus'd ; With furies and nocturnal orgies fir^d, At length against his sacred Ufe conspir*d ; Whom eVn the savage beasts had spar'd they kill'd, And strew'd his mangled limbs about the field.

8 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

VI. Accordingly Clitarchus, in his twelfth book, says that the Gymnosophists despise death, and that the Chaldaeans study astronomy and the science of soothsaying — that the Magi occupy themselves about the service to be paid to the gods, and about sacrifices and prayers, as if they were the only people to whom the deities listen : and that they deliver accounts of the existence and generation of the gods, saying that they are fire, and earth, and water ; and they condemn the use of images, and above all things do they condemn those who say that the gods ^e male and female ; they speak much of justice, and think it impious to destroy the bodies of the dead by fire ; they allow men to marry their mothers or their daughters, as So- tion tells us in his twenty-third book; they study, the arts of soothsaying and divination, and assert that the gods reveal their will to them by those sciences. They teach also that the air is full of phantoms, which, by emanation and a sort of eva- poration, glide into the sight of those who have a clear percep- tion ; they forbid any extravagance of ornament, and tiie tuse of gold ; their garments are white, their beds are made of leaves, and vegetables are their food, with cheese and coarse bread ; they use a rush for a staff, the top of which they run into the cheese, and so taking up a piece of it they eat it. Of all kinds of magical divination they are ignorant, as Aristotle asserts in his book on Magic, and Dinon in the fifth book of his Histories. And this writer says, that the name of Zoroaster being inter- preted means, a sacrifice to the stars ; and Hermodorus makes the same statement. But Aristotle, in the first book of his Treatise on Philosophy, says, that the Magi are more ancient than the Egyptians ; and that according to them there are two principles, a good demon and an evil demon, and that the name of the one is Jupiter or Oromasdes, and that of the other Pluto or Arimanius. And Hermippus gives the same account in the first book of his History of the Magi ; and so does Eudoxus in his Period ; and so does Theopompus in the eighth book of his History of the Affairs of Philip ; and this last writer tells us also, that according to the Magi men will have a resurrection and be immortal, and that what exists now will exist hereafter under its own present name ; and Eudemus of Rhodes coincides in this statement. But Hecatseus says, that according to their doctrines the gods also are beings who have been bom. But Clearchus the Solensian, in his Treatise on

INTRODUCTION. 9

Education says, that the Gymnosophists are descendants of the Magi ; and some say that the Jews also ate derived from them. Moreover, those who have written on the subject of the Magi condemn Herodotus ; for they say that Xerxes would never have shot arrows against the sun, or have put fetters on the sea, as both siin and sea have been handed down by the Magi as gods, but that it was quite consistent for Xerxes to destroy the images of the gods.

VII. The following is the account that authors give of the philosophy of the Egyptians, as bearing on the gods and on justice. They say that the first principle is matter ; then that the four elements were formed out of matter and divided, and that some animals were created, and that the sun and moon are gods, of whom the former is called Osiris and the latter Isis, and they are symbolised under the names of beetles and dragons, and hawks, and other animals, as Manetho tells us in his abridged account of Natural Philosophy, and HecatSBus confirms the statement in the first book of his History of the Philosophy of the Egyptians. They also make images of the gods, and assign them temples because they do not know the form of God. They consider that the world had a begin- ning and vfiU have an end, and that it is a sphere ; they think that the stars are fire, and that it is by a combination of them that the things on earth are generated; that the moon is eclipsed when it falls into the shadow of the earth ; that the soul is eternal and migratory ; that rain is caused by the changes of the atmosphere ; and they enter into other speculations on points of natural history, as Hecatseus and Aristagoras inform us.

They also have made laws about justice, which they attribute to Merciuy, and they consider those animals which are useful to be gods. They claim to themselves the merit of having been the inventors of geometry, and astrology, and arithmetic. So much then for the subject of invention.

VIII. But Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term Philosophy, and who called himself a philosopher ; when he was conversing at Sicyon with Leon, who was tyrant of the Sicyonians or of the Phliasians (as Heraclides Ponticus relates in the book which he* wrote about a dead woman) ; for he said that no man ought to be called wise, but only God. For for- merly what is now called philosophy ((ptXoaopia) was called

10 LIVES OP EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

"wisdom ((fo^/a), and they who professed it were called wise men ((fo<poi), as being endowed with great acuteness and accuracy of mind ; but now he who embraces wisdom is called a philosopher

But the wise men were also called Sophists. And not only they, but poets also were called Sophists : as Cratinus in his Archilochi calls Homer and Hesiod, while praising them highly.

IX. Now these were they who were accounted wise men. Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilo, Bias, Pittficus. To these men add Anacharsis the Scythian, Myson the Chenean, Pherecydes the Syrian, and Epimenides the Cretan ; and some add, Pisistratus, the tyrant : These then are they who were called the wise men.

X. But of Philosophy there arose two schools. One de- rived from Anaximander, the other from Pythagoras. Now, Thales had been the preceptor of Anaximander, and Phere- cydes of Pythagoras. And the one school was called the Ionian, because Thales, being an Ionian (for he was a native of Miletus), had been tlie tutor of Anaximander; — but the other was called the Italian from Pythagoras, because he spent the chief part of his life in Italy. And the Ionic school ends with Clitomswhus, and Chrysippus, and Theo- phrastus ; and the Italian one with Epicurus ; for Anaxi- mander succeeded Thales, and he was succeeded again by Anaximenes, and he by Anaxagoras, and he by Archelaus, who was the master of Socrates, who was the originator of moral philosophy. And he was the master of the sect of the Socratic philosophers, and of Plato, who was the founder of the old Academy; and Plato's pupils were Speusippus and Xenocrates ; and Polemo was the pupil of Xenocrates, and Grantor and Crates of Polemo. Crates again was the master of Arcesilaus, the founder of the Middle Academy, and his pupil was Lacydes, who gave the new Academy its distinctive principles. His pupil was Cameades, and he in his turn was the master of Clitom£u;hus. And this school ends in this way with CUtomachus and Chrysippus.

Antisthenes was the pupil of Socrates, and the master of Diogenes the Cynic ; and the pupil, of Diogenes was Crates the Theban ; Zeno the Cittiaean was his ; Cleanthes was his ; Chrysippus was his. Again it ends with Theophrastus in the following manner : —

INTRODUCTION. 11

Aristotle was the pupil of Plato, Theophrastus the pupil of Aristotle ; and in this way the Ionian school comes to an end.

Now the Italian school was carried on in this way. Pythagoras was the pupil of Pherecydes; his pupil was Telauges his son ; he was the master of Xenophanes, and he of Parmenides ; Parmenides of Zeno the Eleatic, he of Leucippus, he of Democritus : Democritus had many disciples, the most eminent of whom were Nausiphanes and Nausicydes, and they were the masters of Epicurus.

XI. Now, of Philosophers some were dogmatic, and others were inclined to suspend their opinions. By dogmatic, I mean those who explain their opinions about matters, as if' they could be comprehended. By those who suspend their opinions, I mean those who give no positive judgment, think- ing that these things cannot be comprehended. And the former class have left many memorials of themselves ; but the others have never written a line ; as for in- stance, according to some people, Socrates, and Stilpo, and Philippus, and Menedemus, and Pyrrho, and Theodoras, and Gameades, and Bryson ; and, as some people say, Pythagoras, and Aristo of Chios, except that he wrote a few letters. There are some men too who have written one work only, Melissus, Parmenides, and Ajmxagoras ; but Zeno wrote many works, Xenophanes still more ; Democritus more, Aristotle more, Epicurus more, and Chrysippus more.

XII. Again, of philosophers some derived a surname from cities, as, die Elians, and Megaric sect, the Eretrians, and the Cyrenaics. Some from the places which they frequented, as the Academics and Stoics. Some from accidental circum- stances, as the Peripatetics; or, from jests, as the Cynics. Some again from their dispositions, as the Eudsemonics ; some from an opinion, as the Elenctic, and Analogical schools. Some from their masters, as the Socratic and Epicurean phi- losophers; and so on. The Natural Philosophers were so called from their study of nature ; the Ethical philosophers from tlieir investigation of questions of morals (in^i r& idr}). The Dialecticians are they who devote themselves to quibbling on words.

XIII. Now there are three divisions of philosophy. Natural, Ethical, and Dialectic. Natural philosophy occupies

12 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHEKS.

itself about the world and the things in it ; Ethital philosophy about life, and the things which concern us ; Dialectics are conversant with the arguments by which both the others are supported.

Natural philosophy prevailed till the time of Archelaus; but after the time of Socrates, Ethical philosophy was pre- dominant ; and after the time of Zeno the Eleatic, Dialectic philosophy got the upper hand.

Ethical philosophy was subdivided into ten sects ; the Academic, the Cyrenaic, the Elian, the Megaric, the Cynic, the Eretrian, the Dialectic, the Peripatetic, the Stoic, and the Epicurean. Of the old Academic school Plato was the president ; of the middle, Arcesilaus ; and of the New, Lacydes : — the Cyrenaic school was founded by Aristippus the Cyrenian ; the Elian, by Phaedo, of Elis ; the Megaric, by Euclid, of Megara; the Cynic, by Antisthenes, the Athenian; the Eretrian, by Menedemus, of Eretria; the Dialectic by Clitomachus, the Carthaginian ; the Peripatetic, by Aristotle, the Stagirite ; the Stoic, by Zeno, the Cittisean ; the Epicurean school derives its name from Epicurus, its founder.

But Hippobotus, in his Treatise on Sects, says that there are nine sects and schools : firsts the Megaric ; secondly, the Eretrian ; thirdly, the Cyrenaic ; fourthly, the Epicurean ; fifthly, the Annicerean ; sixthly, the Theodorean ; seventhly, the sect of Zeno and the Stoics ; eighthly, that of the Old Academy ; and ninthly, the Peripatetic ; — not counting either the Cynic, or the Eliac, or the Dialectic school. That also which is called the Pyhrronean is repudiated by many, writers, on account of the obscurity of its principles. But others consider that in some particulars it is a distinct sect, and in others not. For it does appear to be a sect — for what we call a sect, say they, is one which follows, or appears to follow, a principle which appears to it to be the true one ; on which principle we correctly call the Sceptics a sect. But if bv the name sect we understand those who incline to rules which are consistent with the principles which they profess, then the Pyrrhonean cannot be called a sect, for they have no rules or principles.

These, then, are the beginnings, these are the successive masters, these are the divisions, and schools of philosophy.

XIV. Moreover, it is not long ago, that a new Eclectic

INTRODUCTION. 13

school was set up by Potamo, of Alexandiia, Yiho picked out of the doctrines of each school what pleased him most. And as he himself says, in his Elementary Instruction, he thinks that there are certain criteria of truth : first of all the faculty which judges, and this is the superior one ; the other that which is the foundation of the judgment, being a most exact appearance of the objects. And the first principles of everything he calls matter, and the agent, and the quality, and the .place. For they show out of what, and by what, and how, and where anything is done. The end is that to which everything is refeired ; namely, a life made perfect vnth every virtue, not without the natural and external qualities of the body.

But we must now speak of the men themselves ; and first of all about Thales.

}4 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

LIFE OF THAI.es.

I. Thales, then, as Herodotus and Duris and Democritus say, was the son of Euxamius and Gleobule ; of the family of the Thelidffi, who are Phoenicians by descent, among the most noble of all the descendants of Cadmus and Agenor, as Plato testifies. And he was the first man to whom the name of Wise was given, when Damasius was Archon at Athens, in whose time also the seven wise men had that title given to them, as Demetrius Phalereus records in his Catalogue of the Archons. He was enrolled as a citizen at Miletus when he came thither ¥dth Neleus, who had been banished from Pfacenicia ; but a more common statement is that he was a native Milesian, of noble extraction.

II. After having been immersed in state affairs he applied himself to speculations in natural philosophy ; though, as some people state, he left no writings behind him. For the book on Naval Astronomy, which is attributed to him is said in reality to be the work of Focus the Samian. But Callimachus was aware that he was the discoverer of the Lesser Bear ; for in his Iambics he speaks of him thus :

And, he, 'tis said, did first compute the stars Which beam in Charles's wain, and guide the bark Of the Phoenician sailor o'er the sea.

According to others he wrote two books, and no more, about the solstice and the equinox ; thinking that everything else was easily to be comprehended. According to other statements, he is said to have been the first who studied astronomy, and who foretold the eclipses and motions of the sun, as Eudemus relates in his history of the discoveries made in astronomy; on which account Xenophanes and Herodotus praise him greatly; and Heraclitus and De- mocritus confirm this statement.

III. Some again (one of whom is Chsrilus the poet) say that he was the first person who affirmed that the souls of men were immortal ; and he was the first person, too, who

THALES. 15

discovered the path of the sun from one end of the ecliptic to the other; and who, as one account tells us, defined the magnitude of the sun as heing seven hundred and twenty times as great as that of the moon. He was also the first person who called the last day of the month the thirtieth. And likewise the first to converse ahout natural philosophy, as some say. But Aristotle and Hippias say that he attributed souls also to lifeless things, forming his conjecture from the nature of the magnet, and of amber. And Pamphile relates that he, having learnt geometry from the Egyptians, was the first person to describe a right-angled triangle in a circle, and that he sacrificed an ox in honour of his discovery. But others, among whom is Apollodorus the calculator, say that it was Pythagoras who made this discovery. It was Thales also who carried to their greatest point of advancement the discoveries which Callimachus in his iambics says were first made by Eu- phebus the Phrygian, such as those of the scalene angle, and of the triangle, and of other things which relate to investigations about lines. He seems also to have been a man of the greatest wisdom in political matters. For when Croesus sent to the Milesians to invite them to an alliance, he prevented them from agreeing to it, which step of his, as Cyrus got the victory, proved the salvation of the city. But Clytus relates, as Heraclides assures us, that he was attached to a solitary and recluse life.

lY. Some assert that he was married, and that he had a son named Cibissus ; others, on the contrary, say that he never had a wife, but that he adopted the son of his sister ; and that once being asked why he did not himself become a father, he answered, that it was because he was fond of chil- dren. They say, too, that when his mother exhorted him to marry, he said, "No, by Jove, it is not yet time." And afterwards, when he was past his youth, and she was again pressing him earnestly, he said, *• It is no longer time."

V. Hieronymus, of Ehodes, also tells us, in the second book of his Miscellaneous Memoranda, that when he was desirous to show that it was easy to get rich, he, foreseeing that there would be a great crop of olives, took some large plantations of olive trees, and so made a great deal of money.

VI. He asserted water to be the principle of all things,

A

16 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

and that the world had life, and was full of daemons : they say, toOt that he was the original definer of the seasons of the year, and that it was he who divided the year into three hundred and sixty-five days. And he never had any teacher except during the time that he went to Egypt, and associated with the priests. Hieronymus also says that he measured the Pyramids : watching their shadow, and calculating when they were of the same size as that was. He lived with Thrasy- bulus the tyrant of Miletus, as we are informed by Minyas.

VII. Now it is known to every one what happened with respect to the tripod that was found byjthe fishermen and sent to the wise men by the people of the Milesians. For they say that some Ionian youths bought a cast of their net from some Milesian fishermen. And when the tripod was drawn up in the net there was a dispute about it; until the Milesians sent to Delphi : and the God gave them the following answer : —

You ask about the tripod, to whom yon shall present it ; j

'Tis for the wisest, I reply, that fortune surely meant it.

Accordingly they gave it to Thales, and he gave it to some one, who again handed it over to another, till it came to Solon. But he said that it was the God himself who was the first in wisdom; and so he sent it to Delphi. But Callimachus gives a different accoimt of this in his Iambics, taking the tradition which he mentions from Leander the Milesian; for he says that a certain Arcadian of the name of Bathydes, when dying, left a goblet behind him with an injunc- tion that it should be given to the first of the wise men. And it was given to Thales, and went the whole circle till it came back to Thales, on which he sent it to Apollo Didymseus, adding (according to Callimachus,) the following distich : —

Thales, who*s twice received me as a prize. Gives me to him who rules the race of Neleus.

And the prose inscription runs thus * —

Thales the son of Examius, a Milesian, offers this to Apollo Didy- mseus, having twice received it from the Greeks as the reward for virtue.

And the name of the son of Bathydes who carried the goblet

THALBS. 17

about from one to the other, was Thyrion, as Eleusis tells us in his History of Achilles. And Alexander the Myndian agrees with him in the ninth book of his Traditions. But Eudoxus of Gnidos, and Evanthes of Miletus, say that one of the friends of Croesus received from the king a golden goblet, for the purpose of giving it to the wisest of the Greeks ; and that he gave it to Thales, and that it came round to Chile, and that he inquired of the God at Delphi who was wiser than him- self; and that the God replied, Myson, whom we shall mention hereafter. (He is the man whom Eudoxus places among the seven wise men instead of Cleobulus ; but Plato inserts his name instead of Periander.) The God accordingly made this reply concerning him : —

I say that Myson, the ^toean sage, ;

The citizen of Chen, is wiser far In his deep mind than you.

The person who went to the temple to ask the question was Anacbarsis ; but again Daedacus, the Platonic philosopher, and Clearchus, state that the goblet was sent by Croesus to Pittacus, and so was carried round to the d^erent men. But Andron, in his ho6k called The Tripod, says that the Argives offered the tripod as a prize for excellence to the wisest of the Greeks ; and that Aristodemus, a Spartan, was judged to deserve it, but that he yielded the palm to Chilo ; and Alcasus mentions Aristodemus in these lines : —

And so they say Aristodoinns once Uttered a truthful speech in noble Sparta : 'Tis money makes the man ; and he who's none. Is counted neither good nor honourable.

But some say that a vessel fully loaded was sent by Periander to Thrasybulus the tyrant of the Milesians ; and that as the ship was wrecked in the sea, near the island of Cos, this tri- pod was afterwards found by some fishermen. Phanodicus says that it was found in the sea near Athens, and so brought into the city ; and then, after an assembly had been held to decide on the disposal, it was sent to Bias — and the reason why we will mention in our account of Bias. Others say that this goblet had been 'made by Vulcan, and presented by the Gods to Pelops, on his marriage ; and that subsequently it came into the possession of Menelaus, and was taken away by Paris

0

18 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS,

when he earned off Helen, and was thrown into the sea near Cos by her, as she said that it would become a cause of battle. And after some time, some of the citizens of Lebedos having bought a net, this tripod was brought up in it ; and as they quarrelled with the fishermen about it, they went to Cos ; and not being able to get the matter settled there, they laid it before the Milesians, as Miletus was their metropolis ; and they sent ambassadors, who were treated with neglect, on which account they made war on the Goans ; and after each side had met with many revolutions of fortune, an oracle directed that the tripod should be ^ven to the wisest $ and then both parties agreed that it belonged to Thales : and he, after it had gone the circuit of all the wise men, presented it to the Didymesan Apollo. Now, the assignation of the oracle was given to the Coans in the following words i —

The war between the brave Ionian race

And the proud Meropes will never cease,

Tin the rich golden tripod which the God,

Its maker, cast beneath the briny waves,

Is from your city sent^ and justly given

To that wise being who knows all present things.

And all that's past, and all that is to come.

And the reply given to the Milesians was —

You ask about the tripod :

and so on, as I have related it before. And now we have said enough on this subject.

But Hermippus, in his Lives, refers to Thales what has been by some people reported of Socrates ; for he recites that he used to say that he thanked fortune for three things : — first of all, that he had been bom a man and not a beast ; secondly, that he was a man and not a woman ; and thirdly, that he was ft Greek and not a barbarian.

YIII. It 'is said that once he vms led out of his house by an old woman for the purpose of observing the stars, and he fell into a ditch and bewailed himself, bn which the old woman said to him — " Do you, O Thales, who cannot see what is under your feet, think that you shall understand what is in heaven ?'* Timon also knew that he was an astronomer, and in his Silli he praises him. saying :_

THALES. 19

Like Thales, wisest of the Beven sagea^ That great astronomer.

And Lobon, of Argos, says, that which was written by him ex- tends to about two hundred verses ; and that the following inscription is engraved upon his statue :—

3iiletus, fairest of Ionian cities,

Gkkve birth to Thales, great astronomer,

Wisest of mortals in all kinds of knowledge.

IX. And these are quoted as some of his lines : —

It is not many words that real wisdom proves ;

Breathe rather one wise thought,

Select one worthy object, So shall you best the endless prate of silly men reprove. —

And the following are quoted as sayings of his : — " God is the most ancient of all things, for he had no birth : the world is the most beautiful of things, for it is the work of God : place is the greatest of things, for it contains all things : intellect is the swiftest of things, for it runs through everything : necessity is the strongest of things, for it rules everything : time is the wisest of things, for it finds out everything."

He said also that there was no difference between life and death. " Why, then," said some one to him, " do not you die?" ** Because," said he, "it does make no difference.'* A man asked him which was made first, night or day, and he replied, " Night was made first by one day." Another man asked him whether a man who did wrong, could escape the notice of the Gods. ** No, not even if he thinks wrong," said he. An adulterer inquired of him whether he should swear that he had not committed adultery. " Peijury," said he, "is no worse than adultery.'* When he was asked what was very difficult, he said, " To know one's self." And what was easy, " To advise another." What was most pleasant ? " To be successful." To the question, " What is the divinity ?" he re- plied, " That which has neither beginning nor end." When asked what hard thing he had seen, he said, " An old man a tyrant." When the question was put to him how a man might most easUy endure misfortune, he said, " If he saw his enemies more unfortunate still." When asked how men might live most virtuously and most justly, he said, "If we never do our- selves what we blame in others." To the question, " Who was

c2

20 LIVES OP EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

happy T he mad© answer, ** He who is healthy in his body, easy in his circumstances, and well-instructed as to his mind." He said that men ought to remember those friends who were absent as well as those who were present, and not to care about adorning their faces, but to be beautified by their studies. " Do not," said he, " get rich by evil actions, and let not any one ever be able to reproach you with speaking against those who partake of your friendship. All the assistance that you give to your parents, the same you have a right to expect from your children." He said that the reason of the Nile over- flowing was, that its streams were beaten back by the Etesian winds blowing in a contrary direction.

X. Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, says, that Thales was bom in the first year of the thirty-fifth Olympiad ; and he died at the age of seventy-eight years, or according to the statement of Sosicrates, at the age of ninety, for he died in the fifty-eighth Olympiad, having lived in the time of Crcesus, to whom he promised that he would enable him to pass the Halys without a bridge, by turning the course of the river.

XI. There have also been other men of the name of Thales, as Demetrius of Magnesia says, in his Treatise on People and Things of the same name; of whom five are particularly mentioned, an orafor of Calatia of a very affected style of eloquence ; a painter of Sicyon, a great man ; the third was one who lived in very ancient times, in the age of Homer and Hesiod and Lycurgus ; the fourth is a man who is mentioned by Duris in his work on Painting ; the fifth is a more modem person, of no great reputation, who is mentioned by Dionysius in his Criticisms.

• XII. But this wise Thales died while present as a spectator at a gymnastic contest, being worn out with heat and thirst and wreakness, for he was very old, and the following inscription was placed on his tomb : —

You see this tomb is small — ^but recollect^ The fame of Thales reaches to the skies.

I have also myself composed this epigram on him in the first book of my epigrams or poems in various metres : —

0 mighty sun, our wisest Thales sat

Spectator of the games, when you did seize upon him ; But you were right to take him near yourself.

Now that his aged sight could scarcely reach to heaven.

THALES. 31

Xill. The apophthegm, "know yourself," is his; though Antisthenes in his Successions, says that it belongs to Fhemonoe, but that Chile appropriated it as his own.

XIV. Now concerning the seven, (for it is well here to speak of them all together,) the following traditions are handed down. Damon the Cyrensean, who wrote about the philosophers, reproaches them all, but most especially the seven. And Anaximenes says, that they all applied themselves to poetry. But Dicaearchus says, that they were neither wise men nor philosophers, but merely shrewd men, who had studied legislation. And Archetimus, the Syracusian, wrote an account of their having a meeting at the palace of Cypselus, at which he says that he himself was present. Ephorus says that they all except Thales met at the court of Croesus. And some say that they also met at the Pandionium,''^ and at Corinth, and at Delphi. There is a good deal of disagreement between different writers with respect to their apophthegms, as the same one is attributed by them to various authors. For instance there is the epigram : —

Chilo, the Spartan sage, this sentence said : Seek no excess— all timely things are good.

There is also a difference of opinion with respect to their number. Leander inserts in the number instead of Cleobulus and Myson, Leophantus Gorsias, a native of either Lebedos or Ephesus; and Epimenides, the Cretan; Plato, in his Protagoras, reckons Myson among them instead of Periander. And Ephorus mentions Anacharsis in the place of Myson; some also add Pythagoras to the number. Dicsearchus speaks of four, as universally agreed upon, Thales, Bias, Pittacus, and Solon; and then enumerates six more, of whom we are to select three, namely, Aristodemus, Pamphilus, Chilo the Lacedaemonian, Cleobulus, Anacharsis, and Periander. Some add Acusilaus of Argos, the son of Cabas, or ^cabras. But Hermippus, in his Treatise on the Wise Men says that there were altogether seventeen, out of whom different authors selected different individuals to make up the seven. These seventeen were Solon, Thales, Pittacus, Bias, Chile, Myson,

* This was the temple of the national diety of the lonians, Neptune Helioonius, on Mount Mycale." — ^Vide Smith, Diet, Gr, cmd Mom, Antiq,

22 LIVES OP EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

Cleobulus, Periander, Anacharsis, Acusilaus, Epimenides, Leophantus, Pherecydes, Aristodemus, Pythagoras, Lasus the son of Charmantides, or Sisymbrinus, or as Aristoxenus calls him the son of Chabrinus, a citizen of Hermione, and Anaxa- goras. But Hippobotus in his Description of the Philoso- phers enumerates among them Orpheus, Linus, Solon, Peri- ander, Anacharsis, Cleobulus, Myson, Thales, Bias, Pittacus, Epicharmus, and Pythagoras.

XV. The following letters are preserved as having been written by Thales : —

THALES TO PHERECYDES.

I hear that you are disposed, as no other Ionian has been, to discourse to the Greeks about divine things, and perhaps it will be wiser of you to reserve for your own friends what you write rather than to entrust it to any chance people, without any advantage. If therefore it is agreeable to you, I should be glad to become a pupil of yours as to the matters about which you write ; and if you invite me I will come to you to Syros; for Solon' the Athenian' and I must be out of our senses if we sailed to Crete to investigate the history of that country, and to Egypt for the purpose of conferring with the priests and astronomers who are to be found there, and yet are unwilling to make a voyage to you; for Solon will come too, if you will give him leave, for as you are fond of your present habitation you are not likely to come to Ionia, nor are you desirous of seeing strangers ; but you rather, as I hope, devote yourself wholly to the occupation of writing. We, on the other hand, who write nothing, travel over all Greece and Asia.

THALES TO SOLON.

XVI. If you should leave Athens it appears to me that you would find a home at Miletus among the colonists of Athens more suitably than anywhere else, for here there are no annoyances of any kind. And if you are indignant because we Milesians are governed by a tyrant, (for you yourself hate all despotic rulers), still at all events you will find it pleasant to live with us for your companions. Bias has also written to invite you to Priene, and if you prefer taking up your abode

SOLON. , 23

in the dty of the Prieneans, then we ourselves will come thither and settle near you.

LIFE OF SOLON.

I. Soix)N the son of Execestides, a native of Salamis, was the first person who introduced among the Athenians, an ordinance for the lowering * of debts ; for this was the name given to the release of the bodies and possessious of the debtors. For men used to borrow on the security of their own persons, and many became slaves in consequence of their inability to pay ; and as seven talents were owed to him as a part of his paternal inheritance when he succeeded to it, he was the first person who made a composition with his debtors, and who exhorted the other men who had money owing to them to do likewise, and this ordinance was called <iit<sdyfiiia ; and the reason why is plain. After that he enacted his other laws, which it would take a long time to enumerate ; and he wrote them on wooden revolving tablets.

II. But ;what was his most important act of all was, when

there had been a great dispute about his native land Salamis,

between the Athenians and Megarians, and when the Athenians

had met with many disasters in war, and had passed a decree

that if any one proposed to the people to go to war for the

sake of Salamis he should be punished with death, he then

pretended to be mad and putting on a crown rushed into the

market place, and there he recited tb the Athenians by the

agency of a crier, the elegies which he had composed, and

which were all directed to the subject of Salamis, and by these

means he excited them ; and so they made war again upon the

Megarians and conquered them by means of Solon. And the

elegies which had the greatest influence on the Athenians were

these : —

Woxdd that I were a man of PholegandroSji* Or small Sicimia,:}: rather than of Athens :

♦ Vide Thirlwall, Hist, of Greece, IL p. 34. f One of the Sporades. X An island near Crete.

S4 LIVES OF EKINENT PHIL080PHEB&

For Boon this will a common proverb be, That's an Athenian who won't fight for Salamis.

And another was : —

Let's go and fight for lovely Salamis, And wipe off this our present infamy.

He also persuaded them to take possession of the Thracian Chersonesus, and in order that it might appear that the Athenians had got possession of Salamis not by force alone, but also with justice, he opened some tombs, and showed that the corpses buried in them were all turned towards the east, according to the Athenian fashion of sepulture ; likewise the tombs them- selves all looked east, and the titles of the boroughs to which the dead belonged were inscribed on them, which was a custom peculiar to the Athenians. Some also say that it was he who added to the catalogue of Homer, after the lines : —

With these appear the Salaminian bands. Whom Telamon's gigantic son commands—

These other verses : —

In twelve black ships to Troy they steer their course. And with the great Athenians join their force.*

III. And ever after this time the people was willingly obedient to him, and was contented to be governed by him ; but he did not choose to be their ruler, and moreover, as Sosicrates relates, he, as far as in him lay, hindered also his relative Pisistratus from being so, when he saw that he was inclined to such a step. Eus£ung into one of the assemblies armed with a spear and shield, he forewarned the people of the design of Pisistratus, and not only that but told them that he was prepared to assist them ; and these were his words : **Ye men of Athens, I am wiser than some of you, and braver than others. Wiser than those of you who do not per- ceive the treachery of Pisistratus; and braver than those who are aware of it, but out of fear hold their peace." But the council, being in the interest of Pisistratus, said that he was mad, on which he spoke as follows : —

A short time will to all my madness prove. When stem reality presents itself.

♦ Horn. D. 2. 671. Diyden's Version,

SOLON. 25

And these elegiac verses -were written by him about the tyranny of Pisistratus, which he foretold,

fierce snow and hail are from the clouds borne down, And thunder after brilliant lightning roars ;

And by its own great men a city falls,

The ignorant mob becoming slaves to kings. - '

IV. And when Pisistratus had obtained the supreme power, he, as he would not influence him, laid down his arms before the chief council-house, and said, " 0 my country, I have stood by you in word* and deed." And then he sailed away to Egypt, and Cyprus, and came to Croesus. And while at his court being asked by him, •* Who appears to' you to be happy? "* He replied, " Tellus the Athenian, and Cleobis and Biton," and enumerated other commonly spoken of instances. But some people say, that once Crcesus adorned himself in every possible manner, and took his seat upon his throne, and then asked Solon whether he had ever seen a more beautiful sight. But he said, '*Yes, I have seen cocks and pheasants, and peacocks ; for they are adorned with natural colours, and such as are ten thousand times more beautiful.*' Afterwards leav- ing Sardis he went to CiHcia, and there he founded a city which he called Soli after his own name ; and he placed in it a few Athenians as colonists, who in time departed from the strict use of their native language, and were said to speak Solecisms ; and the inhabitants of that city are called Solen- sians ; but those of Soli in Cyprus are called Solians.

V. And when he learnt that Pisistratus continued to rule in Athens as a tyrant, he wrote these verses on the Athenians : —

If through jour vices you afflicted are,

Lay not the blame of your distress on Qod ; You made your rulers mighty, gave them guards,

So now you groan 'neath slavery^s heavy rod — "Esuch. one of you now treads in foxiss' steps,

Bearing a weak, inconstant, faithless mind, Trusting the tongue and slippery speech of man ;

Though in his acts alone you truth can find.

This, then, he said to them.

VI. But Pisistratus, when he was leaving Athens, wrote him a letter in the following terms : —

♦ Vide Herod, lib. 1. c. 80—33.

26 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

PISISTBATUS TO SOLON.

I am not the only one of the Greeks who has seized the sovereignty of his country, nor am I one who had no right whatever to do so, since I am of the race of Codras ; for I have only recovered what the Athenians swore that they would give to Oodrus and all his family, and what they afterwards deprived them of. And in all other respects I sin neither against men nor against gods, hut I allow the Athenians to live under the laws which you established amongst them, ajdd they are now living in a better manner than they would if they were imder a democracy ; for I allow no one to behave with violence : and I, though I am the tyrant, derive no other advantage beyond my superiority in rank and honour, being content with the fixed honours which belonged to the former kings. And eveiy one of the Athenians brings the tithe of his possessions, not to me, but to the proper place in order that it may be devoted to the public sacrifices of the city ; and for any other public purposes, or for any emergencies of war which may arise.

But I do not blame you for laying open my plans, for I know that you did so out of regard for the city rather than out of dislike to me ; and also because you did not know what sort of government I was about to establish ; since, if you had been acquainted with it, you would have been content to live imder it and would not have fled. Now, therefore, return home again; believing me even without my swearing to you that Solon shall never receive any harm at the hands of Pisistratus ; know also that none of my enemies have suffered any evil from me ; and if you will consent to be one of my friends, you shall be among the first ; for I know that there is no treachery or faithlessness in you. Or if you wish to live at Athens in any other manner, you shall be allowed to do so; only do not deprive yourself of your country because of my actions.

Thus wrote Pisistratus.

YII. Solon also said, that the limit of human life was seventy years, and he appears to have been a most excellent lawgiver, for he erijoined, " that if any one did not support his parents he should be accounted infamous ; and that the man who squandered his patrimony should be equally so, and the inactive man was liable to prosecution by any one who choose to impeach him. But Lysias, in his speech against Nicias,

SOLON. 27

says that Draco fiist proposed this law, hut that it was Solon who enacted it He also prohibited all who lived in debauchery from ascending the tribunal ; and he diminished the honours paid to Athletes who were rictorious in the games, fixing the prize for a victor at Olympia at five hundred drachmae,* and for one who conquered at the Isthmian games at one hundred ; and in the same proportion did he fix the prizes for the other games, for he said, that it was absurd to give such great honours to those men as ought to be reserved for those only who died in the wars ; and their sons he ordered to be educated and bred up at the public expense. And owing to this encou- ragement, the Athenians behave themselves nobly and valiantly in war; as for instance, Polyzelus, and Gynsegirus, and Callimachus, and all the soldiers who fought at Marathon, and HarmodiuSy and Aristogiton, and Miltiades, and numberless other heroes.

But as for the Athletes, their training is very expensive, and their victories injurious, and they are crowned rather as conquerors of their country than of their antagonists, and when they become old, as Euripides says : —

They're like old cloaks worn to the very woof.

IX. So Solon, appreciating these facts, treated them with moderation. This also was an admirable regulation of his, that a guardian of orphans should not live with their mother, and that no one should be appointed a guardian, to whom tho orphans' property would come if they died. Another excellent law was, that a seal engraver might not keep an impression of any ring which had been sold by him, and that if a person struck out the eye of a man who had but one, he should lose both his own, and that no one should claim what he had not deposited, otherwise death should be his punishment. If an archon was detected being drunk, that too was a capital crime And he compiled the poems of Homer, so that they might be recited by diflferent bards, taking the cue from one another, so that where one had left off the next one might take him up, 80 that it was Solon rather than Pisistratus who brought Homer to light, as Dieuchidas says, in the fifth book of his History of Megara, and the most celebrated of his verses were :— •

I A drachma was somethiDg less than ten pence.

is LIVES OF EMIN^T PmiiOSOPHEBS.

Full fifty more from Athens stem the main.

And the rest of that passage — *' And Solon was the first person -who called the thirtieth day of the month ivri xai vea."* He was the first person also who assembled the nine archons together to deliver their opinions, as ApoUodorus tells us in the second book of his Treatise on Lawgivers. And once, when there was a sedition in the city, he took part, neither with the citizens,' nor with the inhabitants of the plain, nor with the men of the sea-coast.

X. He used to say, too, that speech was the image of actions, and that the king was the mightiest man as to his power ; but that laws were like cobwebs — ^for that if any trifling or power- less thing fell into them, they held it fast ; but if a thing of any size fell into them, it broke the meshes and escaped. He used also to say that discourse ought to be sealed by silence, and silence by opportunity. It was also a saying of his, that those who had influence with tyrants, were like the pebbles which are used in making calculations ; for that eveiy one of those pebbles were sometimes worth more, and sometimes less, and so that the Qrrants sometimes made each of these men of con- sequence, and sometimes neglected them. Being asked why- he had made no law concerning parricides, he made answer, that he did not expect that any such person would exist. When he was asked bowmen could be most effectually deterred from committing injustice, he said, " If those who are not in- jured feel as much indignation as those who are." Another apophthegm of his was, that satiety was generated by wealth, and insolence by satiety.

XI. He it was who taught the Athenians to regulate their

days by the course of the moon ; and he also forbade Thespis

to perform and represent his tragedies, on the ground of

falsehood being unprofitable ; and when Pisistratus wounded

himself, he said it all came of Thespis's tragedies.

* "'Evi| cat via the last day of the month : -elsewhere rptaviSiQ, So called for this reason. The old Greek year was lunar ; now the moon's monthly orbit is twenty-nine and a half days. So that if the first month began with the sun and moon together at sunrise, at the month's end it would be simset ; and the second month would begin at sunset. To prevent this irregularity, Solon made the latter half day belong to the first month ; so that this thirtieth day consisted of two halves, one belonging to the old, the other to the new moon. And when the lunar month fell into disuse, the last day of the calendar month was still called *£v9 km via/* — !• dk & Greek Lexicon, in v. ivo^.

SOLON. 29

XII. He gave the foUoiidng advice, as is recorded by Apol- lodorus in his Treatise on the Sects of Philosophers : — " Con- sider your honour, as a gentleman, of more weight than an oath. — Never speak falsely. — ^Pay attention to matters of im- portance.— Be not hasty in making friends'; and do not cast off those whom you have made. — Rule, after you have first learnt to submit to rule. — Advise not what is most agreeable, but what is best. — Make reason your guide. — Do not asso- ciate with the wicked. — Honour the gods ; respect your parents."

XIII. They say also that when Mimnermus had written : —

Happy's the man who 'scapes disease and care, And dies contented in his sixtieth year :

Solon rebuked him, and said : —

Be guided now hy me, erase this verse. Nor envy me if I'm more wise than yon.

If you write thus, your wish would not be worse, May I be eighty ere death lays me low.

The following are some lines out of his poems : —

Watch well each separate citizen,

Lest having in his heart of hearts

A secret spear, one still may come

Saluting you with cheerful face,

And utter with a double tongue

The feigned good wishes of his wary mind.

As for his having made laws, that is notorious ; he also com- posed speeches to the people, and a book of suggestions to himself, and some elegiac poems, and five thousand verses about Salamis and the constitution of the Athenians ; and some iam- bics and epodes.

XV. And on his statue is the following inscription —

Salamis that checked the Persian insolence. Brought forth this holy lawgiver, wise Solon.

He flourished about the forty-sixth Olympiad, in the third year of which he was archon at Athens, as Sosicrates records ; and it was in this year that he enacted his laws ; and he died in Cyprus, after he had lived eighty years, having given charge to his relations to carry his bones to Salamis, and there to btrm them to ashes, and to scatter the ashes on the ground. In re-

30 LIVES OF EMINENT PHIL0S0PHEB8.

ference to which Cratiuus in his Chiron represents him as speaking thus :—

And as men say, I still this isle inhabit, Sown o'er the whole of Ajaz' famous citj.

There is also an epigram in the hefore mentioned collection of poems, in various metres, in which I have made a collection, of notices of all the illustrious men that have ever died, in everj kind of metre and rhythm, in epigrams and odes. And it runs thus : —

The Cyprian flame devour'd great Solon's corpse,

Far in a foreign land ; but Salamis Retains his bones, whose dust is turned to com.

The tablets of his laws do bear aloft His mind to heaven. Such a burden light

Are these immortal rules to th' happy wood.

XVI. He also, as some say, was the author of the apoph- thegm— " Seek excess in nothing." And Dioscorides, in his Commentaries, says, that, when he was lamenting his son, who was dead (with whose name I am not acquainted), and when some one said to him, " You do no good by weeping," herepUed, "But that is the very reason why I weep, hecause I do no good."

XVII. The following letters also are attributed to him : —

SOLON TO PERIANDEB.

You send me word that many people are plotting against you ; but if you were to think of putting everyone of them out of the way, you would do no good ; but some one whom you do not suspect would still plot against you, partly because he would fear for himself, and partly out of dislike to you for fearing all sorts of things ; and he would think, too, that he would make the city grateful to him, even if you were not suspected. It is hotter, therefore, to abstain from the tyranny, in order to es- cape from blame. But if you absolutely must he a tyrant, then you had better provide for having a foreign force in the city superior to that of the citizens ; and then no one need be for- midable to you, nor need you put any one out of the way.

SOLON TO EPIMENIDES.

XVIII. My laws were not destined to he long of service

SOLON. , 31

to the Athenians, nor have you done any great good by puri- fying the city. For neither can the Deity nor lawgivers do much good to cities by themselves ; but these people rather have this power, who, from time to time, can lead the people to any opinions they choose ; so also the Deity and the laws, when the citizens are well governed, are useful ; but when they are ill govemed,'"they are no good. Nor are my laws nor all the enactments that I made, any better ; but those who were in power tiHBSgressed them, and did great iigniy to the commonwealth, inasmuch as they did not hinder Pisistratus from ursurping the tyranny. Nor did they beheve me when I gave them warning beforehand. But he obtained more credit than I did, who flattered the Athenians while I told him the truth : but I, placing my arms before the principal council- house, being wiser than they, told those who hiad no suspicion of it, that Pisistratus was desirous to make himself a tyrant ; and I showed myself more valiant than those who hesitated to de- fend the state against him. But they condemned the madness of Solon. But at last I spoke loudly — " O, my country, I, Solon, here am ready to defend you by word and deed ; but to these men I seem to be mad. So I will depart from you, being the only antagonist of Pisistratus ; and let these men be his guards if tbey please." For you know the man, my friend, and how cleverly he seized upon the tyranny. He first began by being a demagogue ; then, having inflicted wounds on him- self, he came to the Heliaea, crying out, and saying, " That he had been treated in this way by his enemies.* And he en- treated the people to assign him as giiards four hundred young men ; and they, disregarding my advice, gave them to him. And they were all armed with bludgeons. And after that he put down the democracy. They in vain hoped to deliver the poor from their state of slavery, and so now they are all of them slaves to Pisistratus."

SOLON TO PISISTRATUS.

I am well assured that I should suffer no evil at your hands. For before your assumption of the tyranny I was a friend of yours, and now my case is not different from that of any other Athenian who is not pleased with tyranny. And whether it is better for them to be governed by one individual, or to live under a democracy, that each person may decide

:8fi LIVES OP JIMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

according to bis own sentiments. And I admit that of all tyrants you are the best. But I do not judge it to be good for me to return to Athens, lest any one should blame me, for, after having established equality of civil rights among tlie Athenians, and after having refused to be a tyrant myself when it was in my power, returning now and acquiescing in what you are doing.

SOLON TO CR(ESUS.

XX. I thank you for your goodwill towards me. And, by Minerva, if I did not think it precious above everything to live in a democracy, I would willingly prefer living in your palace with you to living at Athens, since Pisistratus has made himself tyrant by force. But life is more pleasant to me where justice and equality prevail universally. However, I will come and see you, being anxious to enjoy your hospi- . tality for a season.

LIFE OF CHILO.

I. Chilo was a Lacedaemonian, the son of Damagetus. He composed verses in elegiac metre to the number of two hundred : and it was a saying of his that a foresight of future events, such as could be arrived at by consideration was the virtue of a man. He also said once to his brother, who was indignant at not being an ephor, while he himself was one, " The reason is because I know how to bear injustice ; but you do not." And he was made ephor in the fifty-fifth Olym- piad ; but Pamphila says that it was in the fifty-sixth. And he was made first ephor in the year of the archonship of Euthydemus, as we are told by Sosicrates. Chilo was also the first person who introduced the custom of joining the ephors to the kings as their counsellors: though Satyrus attributes this institution to Lycurgus. He, as Herodotus says in his first book, when Hippocrates was sacrificing at Olympia, and the cauldrons began to boil of their own accord, advised him either to marry, or, if he were married already, to discard his wife, and disown his children.

CHILO. 33

IL Thej tell a story, also, of his having asked ^sop ivhat Jupiter was doing, and that iBlsop replied, ** He is lowering what is high, and exalting what is low." Being asked in what educated men differed from those who were illiterate, he said, *' In good hopes." Having had the question put to him, What was difficult, be said, " To he silent ahout secrets ; to make good use of one's leisure, and to he ahle to. submit to in- justice." And besides these three things he added further, '* To rule one's tongue, especially at a banquet, and not to speak ill of one's neighbours ; for if one does so one is sure to hear what one will not like." He advised, moreover, " To threaten no one ; for that is a womanly trick. To be more prompt to go to one's friends in adversity than in prosperity. To make but a moderate display at one's marriage. Not to speak evil of the dead. To honour old age. — To keep a watch upon one's self. — ^To prefer punishment to disgraceful gain ; for the one is painful but once, but the other for one's whole life. — ^Not to laugh at a person in misfortune. — If one is strong to be also merciful, so that one's nei^bours may respect one rather than fear one. — To learn how to regulate one's own house well. — Not to let one's tongue outrun one's sense. — To restrain anger. — Not to dislike divination. — Not to desire what is impossible. — Not to make too much haste on one's road. — When speaking not to gesticulate with the hand; for that is like a madman. — To obey the laws. — ^To love quiet."

And of all his songs this one was the most approved : —

Gold is best tested by a wbetstone hard. Which gives a certain proof of purity ; And gold itself acts as the test of men. By which we know the temper of their minds.

III. They say, too, that when he was old he said, that he vas not conscious of having ever done an unjust action in his life ; but that he doubted about one thing. For that once when judging in a friend's cause he had voted himself in accordance with the law, but had persuaded a friend to vote for his acquittal, in order that so he might TOftiT^tflip the law, and yet save his friend.

IV. But he was most especially celebrated among the Greeks for having delivered an early opinion about Cythera an island belonging to Laconia. For having become ac-

34 UYES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHEBS.

quainted mth. its nature, be saici, '* I wish it had never existed, or that, as it does exist, it were sunk at the bottom of the sea." And his foresight was proved afterwards. For when Demaratus was banished by the LacedadmoniEuis, he advised Xerxes to keep his ships at that island : and Greece would have been subdued, if Xerxes had taken the advice. And afterwards Nicias, having reduced the island at the time of tho Peloponnesian war, placed in it a garrison of Athenians, and. did a great deal of harm to the Lacedaemonians.

V, He was very brief in his speech. On which account Aristagoras, the Milesian, calls such conciseness, the Ghilo* nean fashion ; and says that it was adopted by Branchus, who built the temple among the BranchidaB. Chile was an old man, about the fifty-second Olympiad, when ^sop, the feble writer, flourished. And he died, as Hermippus says, at Pisa, after embracing his son, who had gained the victory in boxing at the Olympic games. The cause of his death was excess of joy, and weakness caused by extreme old age. All the spectators who were present at the games attended his funeral, paying him the highest honours. And we have written the following epigram on him :—

I thank you, brightest Pollux, that the son

Of ChUo wears the wreath of victory ; Nor need we grieve if at the glorious sight

His father died. May such my last end be !

And the following inscription is engraved on his statue : —

The warlike Sparta called this Chilo son, The wisest man of all the seven sages.

One of his sayings was, " Suretyship, and then destruction." The following letter of his is also extant : —

CHILO TO PEBIANDER.

You desire me to abandon the expedition against the emigrants, as you yourself will go forth. But I think that a sole governor is in a slippery position at home ; and I consider tliat tyrant a fortunate man who dies a natural death in his. own house.

PJTTACUS. 35

LIFE OF PITTACUS.

I. PiTTACUS wasanativeof Mitylene, and son of Hyrradius. But Duris says, that his father was a Thracian. He, in union with the brothers of Alcaeus, put down Melanchrus the tyrant of Lesbos. And in the battle which took place between the Athenians and Mitylenseans on the subject of the district of Achilis, he was the Mitylensean general ; the Atheniar commander being Phrynon, a Pancratiast, who had gained the victory at Olympia. Pittacus agreed to meet him in single combat, and having a net under his shield, he entangle^ Phrynon without his being aware of it beforehsmd, and so, having killed him, he preserved the district in dispute to his countrymen. But Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, says, that subsequently, the Athenians had a trial with the Mitylenseans about the district, and that the cause was submitted to Peri- ander, who decided it in favour of the Athenians.

II. In consequence of this victory the Mitylenseans held Pittacus in the greatest honour, and committed the supreme power into his hands. And he held it for ten years, and then, when he had brought the city and constitution into good order, he resigned the government. And he lived ten years after that, and the Mitylenseans assigned him an estate, which he consecrated to the God, and to this day it is called the Pitta- clan land. But Sosicrates says that he cut off a small portion of it, saying that half was more than the whole ; and when Croesus offered him some money he would not accept it, as he said that he had already twice as much as he wanted ; for that he had succeeded to the inheritance of his brother, who had died without children.

III. But Pamplula says, in the second book of his Com- mentaries, that he had a son named Tyrrhseus, who was killed while sitting in a barber's shop, at Cyma, by a brazier, who threw an axe at him ; and that the Cymseans sent the murderer to Pittacus, who when he had learnt what had been done, dismissed the man, saying, '* Pardon is better than repent- ance." But Heraclitus says that the true story is, that he had got Alcseus into his power, and that he released him, saying, "Pardon is better than punishment.'* He was also a law-

D 3

36 LITES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

giver ; and he made a law tbat if a man committed a crime while drunk, he should have douhle punishment ; in the hope of deterring men from getting drunk, as wine was veiy plentiful in the island.

IV. It was a saying of his that it was a hard thing to he good, and this apophthegm is quoted hj Simonides, who says, " It Was a saying of Pittacus, that it is a hard thing to he really a good man.** Plato also mentions it in his Protagoras. Another of his sayings was, ** Even the Gods cannot strive against necessity.** Another was, " Power shows the man.*' Being once asked what was best, he replied, " To do what one is doing at the moment well." When Crcesus put the question to him, " What is the greatest power ?'* " The power,** he replied, " of the variegated wood,** meaning the wooden tablets of the laws. He used to say too, that there were some victories without bloodshed. He said once to a man of Phocsea, who was saying that we ought to seek out a virtuous man, '* But if you seek ever so much you will not find one.*' Some people once asked him what thing was very grateful ? and he replied, " Time.**— What was uncertain ? "The future.*'— What was trusty ? " The land.'*— What was treacherous ? " The sea '* Another saying of his was, that it was the part of wise men, before difficult circumstances arose, to provide for their not arising ; but that it was the part of brave men to make the best of existing circumstances. He used to say too, " Do not say before hand what you are going to do; for if you fail, you will be laughed at." " Do not reproach a man with his misfortunes, fearing lest Neinesis may overtake you." " If you have received a deposit, restore it.'* " Forbear to speak evil not only of your friends, but also of your enemies." *• Practise piety, with temperance.*' " Cultivate truth, good faith, experience, cleverness, sociability, and industry.**

V. He wrote also some songs, of which the following is the most celebrated one : —

The wis© will only fiace the wicked man,

With bow in hand well bent,

And quiver full of arrows —

For 8uck a tongae as his says nothing true,

Prompted by a wily heart

Tq ufier double speeches.

He also composed six hundred verses in elegiac metre ; and

PITTACUS. 37

he wrote a treatise in prose, on Laws, addressed to his country- men.

VI. He flourished about the forty-second Olympiad ; and he died when Aristomenes was Archon, in the third year of the fifty-second Olympiad ; having lived more than seventy years, being a very old man. And on his tomb is this in- scription : —

Lesbos who bore him here, with tears doth bury Hyrradius' worthy son, wise Pittacos.

Another saying of his was, " Watch your opportunity."

VII. There was also another Pittacus, a lawgiver, as Favo- rinus tells us in the first book of his Commentaries; and Demetrius says so too, in his Essay on Men and Things of the same name. And that other Pittacus was called Pittacus the less.

VIII. But it is said that the wise Pittacus otice, when a young man consulted him on the subject of marriage, madd him die following answer, which is thus given by Callimachus in his Epigrams.

Hyrradius' prudent son, old Pittacus

The pride of Mitylene, once was asked

By an Atamean stranger ; '' Tell me, sage,

I have two marriages proposed to me ;

One maid my equal is in birth and riches ;

The other's far above me ; — ^which is best ?

Advise me now which shall 1 take to wife r

Thus spoke the stranger ; but the aged prince,

Kaising his old man's sta^ before his face,

Said, '' These will tell you all you want to know ;"

And pointed to some boys, who with quick lashes

Were driving whipping tops along the street.

" Follow their steps,** said he ; sb he went near them

And heard them say, " Let each now mind his own." —

So when the stranger heard the boys speak thus,

He pondered on their words, and laid aside

Ambitious thoughts of an unequal marriage.

As then he took to shame the poorer bride.

So too do you, 0 reader, mind thy own.

And it seems that he may have here spoken from experience, for his own wife was of more noble birth than himself, since she was the sister of Draco, the son of Penthilus ; and she gave herself great airs, and tyrannized over him.

38 LIVES OP EMINENT PHILOSOPEER8.

IX. Alcfleas calls Pittacus ffa^dirovi and ed^airo^, because be was splay-footed, and used to drag bis feet in walking; he also called him ;^«/^o«*^^ijf, because he bad scars on bis feet which were called xu^dhtg. And yab^^, implying that he gave himself airs without reason. And (plttfKuv and ydcr^m, because he was fat. He also called him Z,o(podo^tBag, because he had weak eyes, and aya<rugro;, because he was lazy and dirty. He used to grind com for the sake of exercise, as Clearchus, the philosopher, relates.

X. There is a letter of his extant, which runs thus :— »

PITTACUS TO CRCESUS.

You invito me to come to Lydia in order that I may see your riches; but I, even without seeing them, do not doubt that the son of Alyattes is the richest of monarchs. But I should get no good by going to Sardis ; for I do not want gold myself, but what I have is sufficient for myself and my companions. Still, I will come, in order to become acquainted with you as a hospitable man.

LIFE OF BIAS.

I. Bias was a citizen of Priene, and the son of Teutamus, and by Satyrus he is put at the head of the seven wise men. Some Jni^rTlrm thlt he was one of the richest men of the city ; but others say that he was only a settler. And Phanodicus says, that he ransomed some Messenian maidens who had been taken prisoners, and educated them as his own daughters, and gave them dowries, and then sent them back to Messina to their fathers. And when, as has been mentioned before, the tripod was found near Athens by some fishermen, the brazen tripod 1 mean, which bore the inscription — "For the Wise ;" then Satyrus says that the damsels (but others, such as Phano- dicus, say that it was their father,) came into the assembly, and said that Bias was the wise man — ^recounting what he had done to them': and so the tripod was sent to him. But Bias, when he saw it, said that it was Apollo who was " the Wise,'*" and would not receive the tripod.

BIAS. 39

II. Bat others say that he consecrated it at Thebes to Her- cules, because he himself was a descendant of the Thebans, who had sent a colony to Priene, as Phanodicus relates. It is said also that when Alyattes was besieging Priene, Bias fattened up two males, and drove them into his camp ; and that the king, seeing the condition that the mules were in, was astonished at their being able to spare food to keep the brute beasts so well, and so he desired to make peace witb them, and sent an am- bassador to them. On this Bias, having made some heaps of sand, and put corn on the top, showed them to the convoy ; and Alyattes, hearing from him what he had seen, made peace mth. the people of Priene ; and then, when he sent to Bias, ' desiring him to come quickly to him, " Tell Alyattes, from me," ha replied, " to eat onions ;" — which is the same as if he had said, " go and weep."

III. It is said that he was veiy energetic and eloquent when pleading causes ; but that he always reserved his talents for the right side. In reference to which Demodicus of Alerius uttered the following enigmatical saying — " If you are a judge, give a Prienian decision." And Hipponax says, " More ex* cellent in his decisions than Bias of Priene.'* Now he died in this manner : —

ly. Having pleaded a cause for some one when he was ex- ceedingly old, aiter he had finished speaking, he leaned back with his head on the bosom of his daughter's son ; and after the advocate on the opposite side had spoken, and the judges had given their decision in favour of Bias's client, when the court broke up he was found dead on his grandson^s bosom. And the city buried him in the greatest magnificence, and put over him this inscription —

Beneath this stone lies Bias, who was bom In the illustrious Prienian land, The glory of the whole Ionian race.

And we ourselves have also written an epigram on him —

Here Bias lies, whom, when the hoary snow Had crowned his aged temples, Mercury Unpitying led to Pluto's darken'd realms. He pleaded his friend's cause, and then reclin'd In his child's arms, repos'd in lasting sleep.

V. He also wrote about two thousand verses on Ionia, to

'40 LIVES OP EMINENT PHILOSOPHEBS.

show in what matter a man might best arrive at happiness ; and of all his poetical sayings these have the greatest reputation :— *

Seek to please all the citizens, even though Your house may be in an ungracious city. For such a course will favour win from all : But haughty mannen oft produce destructioii.

And this one too : —

Qreat strength of body is the gift of nature ; But to be able to advise whatever Is most expedient for one's country's good. Is the peculiar work of sense and wisdom.

Another is; —

Great riches come to many mdn by chance.

He used also to say that that man was unfortunate who could not support misfortune; and that it is a disease of the mind to desire what was impossible, and to have no regard for the misfortunes of others. Being asked what was difficult,' he said—** To bear a change of fortune for the worse with magna- nimity." Once he was on a voyage with some impious men, and the vessel was overtaken by a storm ; so they began to in- voke the assistance of the Gods ; on which he said, " Hold your tongues, lest they should find out that you are in this ship." When he was asked by an impious man what piety was, he made no reply ; and when his questioner demanded the reason of his silence, he said, ** I am silent because you are putting questions about things with which you have no concern." Being asked what was pleasant to men, he replied, "Hope." It was a saying of his that it was more agreeable to decide between enemies than between friends ; for that of friends, one was sure to become an enemy to him; but that of enemies, one was sure to become a friend. When the question was put to him, what a man derived pleasure while he was doing, he said, " While acquiring gain." He used to say, too, that men ought to calculate life both as if they were fated to live a long and a short time : and that they ought to love one another as if at a future time they would come to hate one another; for that most men were wicked. He used also to give the following pieces of advice : — " Choose the course which you adopt with deliberation ; but when you have adopted it, then persevere in

CLEOBULUS. 41

it with fLrmness. — Do not speak fast, for that shows folly. — Love prudence. — Speak of the Gods as they are. — Do not praise an undeserving man because of his riches. — Accept of things, having procured them by persuasion, not by force. — Whatever good fortune befalls you, attribute it to the gods. — Cherish wisdom as a means of travelling from youth to old age, for it is more lasting than any other possession."

YI. Hipponax also mentions Bias, as has been said before ; and Heraclitus too, a man who was not easily pleased, has praised him ; saying, in Priene there lived Bias the son of Teutamus, whose reputation is higher than that of the others ; and the Prienians consecrated a temple to him which is ^called the Teutamium. A saying of his was, ** Most men are wicked."

LIFE OF CLEOBULUS.

I. Cleobulus was a native of Lindus, and the son of Evagoras ; but according to Duris he was a Carian ; others again trace his family back to Hercules. He is reported to have been eminent for personal strength and beauty, and to have studied philosophy in Egypt ; he had a daughter named Cleobulina, who used to compose enigmas in hexameter verse, and she is mentioned by Cratinus in his play of the same name, except that the title is written in the plural number. They say also that he restored the temple of Minerva which had been built by Danaus.

IT. Cleobtdus composed songs and obscure sayings in verse to the number of three thousand lines, and some say that it was he who composed the epigram on Midas.

I am a brazen maiden lying here Upon the tomb of Midas. And as long As water flows, as trees are green with leaves, As the sun shines and eke the silver moon, As long as rivers flow, luid billows roar, So long will I upon this much wept tomb, Tell passers by, ** Midas lies buried here.*'

And as an evidence of this epigram being by him they quote a song of Simonides, which runs thus : —

4Ji LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

What men possessed of sense

Would ever pnuse the Lindian Cleobulns ?

Who could compare a statue made by man

To everflowing streams,

To blushing flowers of spring,

To the sun's rays, to beams o' the golden mom,

And to the ceaseless waves of mighty Ocean ?

All things are trifling when compared to God.

While men beneath their hands can crush a stone ;

So that such sentiments can only come from fools.

And the epigram cannot possibly be by Homer, for he lived many years, as it is said, before Midas.

III. There is also the following enigma quoted in the Commentaries of Pamphila, as the work of Cleobulus : —

There was one father and he had twelve daughters, Each of his daughters had twice thirty children. But most unlike in figure and complexion ; For some were white, and others black to view. And though immortal they all taste of death. •

And the solution is, " the year."

IV. Of his apophthegms, the following are the most cele- lehrated. Ignorance and talkativeness bear the chief sway among men. Opportunity will be the most powerful. Cherish not a thought. Do not be fickle, or ungrateful. He used to say too, that men ought to give their daughters in marriage while they were girls in age, but women in sense ; as indicating by this that girls ought to be well educated. Another of his sayings was, that one ought to serve a friend that he may be- come a greater friend ; and an enemy, to make him a friend. And that one ought to guard against giving one s Mends occsr sion to blame one, and one's enemies opportunity of plotting against one. Also, when a man goes out of his house, he should consider what he is going to do : and when he comes home again he should consider what he has done. He used also to advise men to keep their bodies in health by exercise. — To be fond of hearing rather than of talking.— To he fond of learning rather than unwiUing to learn. — ^To speak well of people. — To seek virtue and eschew vice. — To avoid injustice. — ^To give the best advice in one's power to one's country. — ^To be superior to pleasure. — To do nothing by force. — To instruct one's children,

PEBIANDEB. 43

— To be ready for reconciliation after quarrels. — Not to caress one's wife, nor to quarrel with her when strangers are present, for that to do the one is a sign of folly, and to do the latter is downright madness. — Not, to chastise a servant while elated with drink, for so doing one will appear to be drunk one's self. — To marry 6^m among one's equals, for if one takes a wife of a higher rank than one's self, one will have one's connexions for one's masters. — Not to laugh at those who are being reproved, for so one will be detested by them. — Be not haughty when prosperous. — Be not desponding when in difficulties. — Learn to bear the changes of fortune with magnanimity.

V. And he died at a great age, having lived seventy years, and this inscription was put over him : —

His oountiy, Lmdus, this fair sea-girt city Bewails wise Cleobulus here entombed.

VI. One of his sayings was, " Moderation is the best thing.'* He also wrote a letter to Solon in these terms : —

CLEOBULUS TO SOLON.

You have many friends, and a home everywhere, but yet I think that Xiindus will be the most agreeable habitiition for. Solon, since it enjoys a democratic government, and it is a ma- ritime island, and whoever dwells in it has nothing to fear from Pisistratus, and you will have friends flock to you from all quarters.

LIFE OF PERIANDER.

I

I. Pertanbbr was a Corinthian, the son of Cypselus, of the family of the Heraclidas. He married Lyside (whom he himself called Melissa), the daughter of Procles the tyrant of Epidaurus, and of Eristhenea the daughter of Aristocrates, and sister of Aristodemus, who governed nearly all Arcadia, as He* raclides Ponticus says in his Treatise on Dominion and had by her two sons Cypselus and Lycophron, the younger of whom was a clever boy, but the elder was deficient in intellect At a sub- sequent period he in a rage either kicked or threw his wife down stairs when she was pregnant, and so killed her, being wrought

44 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

upon by the false accusations of bis concubines, whom be after- wards burnt alive. And the child, whose name was Lyoophix>n, he sent away to Corcyra because he grieved for his mother.

II. But afterwards, when he was now extremely old, he sent for liim back again, in order that he might succeed to the tyranny. But t^e Corcyreans, anticipating his intention, put him to death, at which he was greatly enraged, and sent their children to Corcyra to be made eunucks of ; and when the shift came near to Samos, the youths, having made supplications to Juno, were saved by the Samians. And he fell into despondency and died, being eighty years old. Sosicrates says that he died forty-one years be&re Croesus, in the last year pf the forty- eighth Olympiad. Herodotus, in the first book of his History, says that he was connected by ties of hospitality with Thrasy- bulus the tyrant of Miletus. And Aristippus, in the first bdok of his Treatise on Ancient Luxury, tells the following story of him ; that his mother Cratea fell in love with him, and in* troduced herself secretly into his bed ; and he was delighted ; but when the truth was discovered he became very oppressive to all his subjects, because he was grieved at the discoveiy. Ephorus relates that he made a vow that, if he gained the victory at Olympia in the chariot race, he would dedicate a golden statue to the God. Accordingly he gained the victory ; but being in want of gold, and seeing the women at some national festival beautifully adorned, he took away their golden ornaments, and then sent the offering which he had vowed.

III. But some writers say that he was anxious that his tomb should not be known, and that with that object he adopted the following contrivance. He ordered two young men to go out by night, indicating a particular road by which they were to go, and to kill the first man they met, and bury him ; after them he sent out four other men who were to kOl and bury them. Again he sent out a still greater number against these four, with similar instructions. And in this manner he put himself in the way of the first pair» and was slain, and the Corinthians erected a cenotaph over him with the following intcfiptioii t*«<

The sea-beat land of Corinth in her bosom. Doth here embrace her ruler Periander, Greatest of all men for his wealth and wisdom.

We ourselves have also written an epigram upon him : —

PERIANDEB. 45

Grieve not when disappointed of a wish,

But be content with what the Gods may give you —

For the great Periander died unhappy,

At failing in an object he desired.

IV. It was a saying of his that we ought not to do anything for the sake of money ; for that we ought only to acquire such gains as are allowable. He composed apophthegms in verse to the number of two thousand lines ; and said that those who wished to wield absolute power in safety, should be guarded by the good will of their countrymen, and not by arms. And once, being asked why he assumed tyrannical power, he replied, " Because, to abdicate it voluntarily, and to have it taken from one, are both dangerous." The following sayings also belong to him : — ^Tranquillity is a good thing. — Rashness is danger- ous.— Gain is disgraceful. — Democracy is better than tyranny. ' — Pleasures are transitory, but honour is immortal.— *Be moderate when prosperous, but prudent when unfortunate. — Be the same to your friends when they are prosperous, and when they are unfortunate. — Whatever you agree to do, observe — ^Do not divulge secrets. — Punish not only those who do wrong, but those who intend to do so.

V. This prince was the first who had body-guards, and who changed a legitimate power into a tyranny ; and he would not allow any one who chose to live in his city, as Euphorus and Aristotle tell us.

VI. And he flourished about the thirty-eighth Olympiad, and enjoyed absolute power for forty years. But Sotion, and He- radides, and Pamphila, in the fifth book of her Commen- taries, says that there were two Perianders ; the one a tyrant, and the other a wise man, and a native of Ambracia. And Neanthes of Gyzicus makes the same assertion, adding, that the two men were cousins to one another. And Aristotle says, that it was the Corinthian Periander who was the wise one ; but Plato contradicts him. The saying — " Practice does everythingy*' is his. He it was, also, who proposed to cut through the Isthmus.

VII. The following letter df lus is quoted : —

FKRIANOEB TO THE WISE MEN.

I give great thanks to Apollo of Delphi that my letters are

46 LIVES OF BBaNENT PHILOSOPHERS.

able to determine you all to meet together at Corinth ; and I vnYL receive you all, as you may be well assured, in a manner that becomes free citizens. I hear also that last year you met at Sardis, at the court of the King of Lydia. So now do not hesitate to come to me, who am the tyrant of Corinth ; foj the ' Corinthians will all be delighted to see you come to the house of Periander.

VIII. There is this letter too : —

PERIANDEB TO PBOCLES.

The injury of my wife was unintended by me ; and you have done wrong in alienating from me the mind of my child. I desire you, therefore, either to restore me to my place in his afifections, or I will revenge myself on you ; for I have myself made atonement for the death of your daughter, by burning in her tomb the clothes of all the Corinthian women.*

IX. Thiasybulus also wrote him a letter in the following terms :^

I have given no answer to your messenger; but having taken him into a field, I struck with my walking-stick all the highest ears of corn, and cut off their tops, while he was walking with me. And lie wll report to you, if you ask him, every- thing which he heard or saw while with me; and do you act accordingly if you wish to preserve your power safely, taking off the most eminent of the citizens, whether he seems an enemy to you or not, as even his companions are deservedly objects of suspicion to a man possessed of supreme power.

LIFE OF ANACHARSIS, THE SCYTHIAN.

I. Anachabsis the Scythian was the son of Gnurus, and the brother of Caduides the king of the Scythians ; but his mother was a Grecian woman ; owing to which circumstance he understood both languages.

II. He vnrote about the laws existing among the Scythians, and also about those in force among the Greeks, urging men

* Herodotus mentions the case of Periander's children, iii 50, and the death of his wife, and his burning the clothes of all the Corinthian women, v. 92.

ANACHARSIS. 47

to adopt a temperate course of life; and he wrote also about war, his works being in verse, and amounting to eight hundred lines. He gave occasion for a proTerb, because he used great freedom of speech, so that people called such freedom the Scythian conversation.

. III. But Sosicrates says that he came to Athens in the forty-seventh Olympiad, in the archonship of Eucrates. And Hermippus asserts that he came to Solon's house, and ordered one of the servants to go and tell his master that Anacharsis was come to visit him, and was desirous to see him, and, if possible, to enter into relations of hospitaUty with him. But when the servant had given the message, he was ordered by Solon to reply to hinri that, *' Men generally limited such alliances to their own countrymen.'* In reply to this Anacharsis entered the house, and told the servant that now he was in Solon's country^ and that it was quite consistent for them to become connected with one another in this way. On this, Solon admired the readiness of the man, and admitted him, and made him one of his greatest friends.

IV. But after some time, when he had returned to Scythia, aad shown a purpose to abrogate the existing institutions of his coantry, being exceedingly earnest, in his fondness for Grecian' customs, he was shot by his brother while he was out hunting, and so he died, saying, '* That he was saved on account of the sense and eloquence which he had brought from Greece, but slain in consequence of envy in his own family." Some, how- ever, relate that he was slain while performing some Grecian sacrificatory rites. And we have written this epigram on him : —

When Anacharsis to his land returned. His mind was tum'd, so that he wished to make His countrymen all live in Grecian fashion — So, ere his words had well escaped his lips, A winged arrow bore him to the Qods.

V, He said that a vine bore three bunches of grapes. The first, the bunch of pleasure ; the second, that of drunkenness ; the third, that of disgust. He also said that he marvelled that among the Greeks, those who were skilful in a thing contend together ; but those who have no such skill act as judges of the contest. Being once asked how a person might be made not fond of drinking, he said, " If he always keeps in view the indecorous actions of drunken men." He used also to say,

48 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHEBS.

that he marvelled how the Greeks, who make laws against those who hehaye with insolence, honour Athletae because of their beating one another. When he had been informed that the sides of a ship were four fingers thick, he said, ** That those who sailed in one were removed by just that distance from death. He used to say that oil was a provocative of madness, *' because Athlet», when anointed in the oil, attacked one another with mad fiuy.**

" How is it,'* he used to say, " that those who forbid men to speak falsely, tell lies openly in their vintners' shops?" It was a saying of his» that he " marvelled why the Greeks, at the beginning of a banquet, drink out of small cups, but when they have drunk a good deal, then they turn to lajtge goblets." And this inscription is on his statues — '* Eestrain your tongues, your appetites, and your passions." He was once asked if the flute was known among the Scjrthians ; and he said, '* No, nor the vine either." At another time, the question was put to him, which was the safest kind of vessel? and he said, *' That which is brought into dock."* He said, too, that the strangest things that he had seen among the Greeks was, that '* They left the smoke* in the mountains, and carried the wood down to their cities." Once, when he was asked, which were the more numerous, the living or the dead? he said, " Under which head do you class those who are at sea." Being re- proached by an Athenian for being a Scythian, he said, " Well, my country is a disgrace to me, but you are a disgrace to your country.'' When he was asked what there was among men which was both good and bad» he replied, ** The tongue.*' He used to say " That it was better to have one friend of great value, than many friends who were good for nothing." Another saying of his was, that " The forum was an established place for men to cheat one another, and behave covetously." Being once insulted by a young man at a drinking party, he said, " O, young man, if now that you are young you cannot bear wine, when you are old you will have to bear water."

YI. Of things which are of use in life, he is said to have been the inventor of the anchor, and of the potters wheel.

* Some propose to read Kaprrbv, fruU, instead of cairvdv, 9mohe, here ; others explain this saying as meaning that the Greeks avoided houses on the hills in order not to be annoyed with the smoke from the low cottages, and yet did not use coal, but wood, which made more smoke.

MTSON. 49^

VII. The following letter of his is extant : —

ANACHAB8IS TO CB(ESUS.

O king of the Lydians, I am come to the country of the Greeks, in order to become acquainted with their customs and institutions ; but I have no need of gold, and shall be quite contented if I return to Scythia a better man than I left it. However I will come to Sardis, as I think it very desirable to become a friend of yours.

LIFE OF MYSON.

#

I. Myson, the son of Strymon, as Sosicrates states, quoting

Hermippus as his authority, a Chenean by birth, of some ^tsean or Ltaconian village, is reckoned one of the seven wise men, and they say that his father was tyrant of his country. It is said by some writers that, when Anacharsis inquired if any one was wiser than he, the priestess at Delphi gave the answer which has been' already quoted in the Hfe of Thales in reference to Chile : —

I say that Myson the ^taean sage^ The citizen of Chen, is wiser far In his deep mind th^-n you.

And that he, having taken a great deal of trouble, came to the village, and found him in the summer season fitting a handle to a plough, and he addressed him, '* O Myson, this is not now ihe season for the plough." '' Indeed," said he, " it is a capital season for preparing one;" but others say, that the words of the oracle are the Etean sage, and they raise the ques- tion, what the word Etean means. So Parmenides says, that it is a borough of Laconia, of which Myson was a native; but Sosicrates, in his Successions says, that he was an Etean on his father's side, and a Chenean by his mother's. But Euthyphron, the son of Heraclides Ponticus, says that he was a Cretan, for that Etea was a city of Crete.

II. And Anaulaus says that he was an Arcadian. Hipponax also mentions him, saying, ** And Myson, whom Apollo stated

E

50 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

to be the most pradent of all men." But Aristoxenus, in his Miscellanies, says that his habits were not very different from those of Timon and Apemantus, for that he was a misanthrope. And that accordingly he was one day found in Lacedsemon laughing by himself in a solitary place, and when some one came up to him on* a sudden and asked him why he laughed when he was by himself, he said, "For that very reason." Aristoxenus also says thjit he was not thought much of, because he was not a native of any city, but only of a village, and that too one of no great note ; and according to him, it is on account of this obscurity of his that some people attribute his sayings and doings to Pisistratus the tyrant, but he excepts Plato the philosopher, for he mentions Myson in his Prota- goras, placing him among the wise men instead of Periander. ^ III. It used to be a common saying of his that men ought not to seek for things in words, but for words in things ; for that things are not made on account of words, but that words are put together for the sake of things.

IV. He died when he had lived ninety-seven years.

LIFE OF EPIMENIDES.

I. Epimenides, as Theopompus and many other writers tell us, was the son of a man named Phsedrus, but some call him the son of Dosiadas ; and others of Agesarchus. He was a Cretan by birth, of the city of Gnossus ; but because he let his hair grow long, he did not look like a Cretan.

II. He once, when he was sent by his father into the fields to look for a sheep, turned out of the road at mid-day and lay down in a certain cav^e and fell asleep, and slept there fifty- seven years ; and after that, when he awoke, he went on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been taking a short nap ; but as he could not find it he went on to the field and there he found everything changed, and the estate in another person's possession, and so he came back again to the city in great perplexity, and as he was going into his own house he met some people who asked him who he was, until at last he found

EPIMENIDES. 51

his youDger brother who had now become an old man, and from him be learnt all the tiiith.

III. And when he was recognized he was considered by the Greeks as a person especially beloved by the Gods, on which account when the Athenians were aflflicted by a plague, and tlie priestess at Delphi enjoined them to purify their city, they sent a ship and Nicias the son of Niceratus to Crete, to invite Epimenides to Athens ; and he, coming there in the forty- sixth Olympiad, piurified the city and eradicated the plague for that time ; he took some black sheep and some white ones and led them up to the Areopagus, and from thence he let them go wherever they chose, having ordered the attendants to follow them, and wherever any one of them lay down they were to sacrifice him to the God who was the patron of the spot, and so the evil was stayed ; and owing to this one may even now find in the different boroughs of the Athenians altars without names, which are a sort of memorial of the propitiation of the Gods that then took place. Some said that* the cause of the plague was the pollution contracted by the city in the matter of Cylon, and that Epimenides pointed out to the Athenians how to get rid of it, and that in consequence they put to death two young men, Oratinus and Ctesilius, and that thus the pestilence was put an end to.

III. And the Athenians passed a vote to give him a talent and a ship to convey him back to Crete, but he would not accept the money, but made a treaty <^ friendship and alliance between the Gnossians and Athenians.

IV. And not long after he had returned home he died, as Fhlegon relates in his book on long-lived people, after he had lived a hundred and fifty-seven years ; but as the Cretans report he had lived two hundred and ninety-nine ; but as Xenophones the Colophonian, states that he had heard it reported, he was a hundred and fifty-four years old when he died.

V. He wrote a poem of five thousand verses on the Gene- riEition and Theogony of the Curetes and Corybantes, and another poem of six thousand five hundred verses on the building of the Argo and the expedition of Jason to Colchis.

VI. He also wrote a treatise in prose on the Sacrifices in Crete, and the Cretan Constitution, and on Minos and, Hhodamanthus, occupying four thousand lines.

eU

52 UVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHEBfi.

VI. Likewise he built at Athens the temple which is there dedicated to the yenerable goddesses, as Lobon the Augur says in his book on Poets ; and he is said to have been Uie first person who purified houses and lands, and who built temples.

VII. There are some people who assert that he did not sleep for the length of time that has been mentioned above, but that he was absent from his countiy for a considerable period, occupying himself with the anatomisation and ex- amination of roots.

VIII. A letter of his is quoted, addressed to Solon the lawgiver, in which he discusses the constitution which Minos gave the Cretans. But Demetrius the Magnesian, in his treatise on Poets and Prose writers of the same name as one another, attempts to prove that the letter is a modem one, and is not written in the Cretan but in the Attic dialect, and the new Attic too.

IX. But I have also discovered another letter of his which runs thus : —

EPIMENIDES TO SOLON.

Be of good cheer, my friend ; for if Pisistratus had imposed his laws on the Athenians, they being habituated to slaveiy and not accustomed to good laws previously, he would have maintained his dominion for ever, succeeding easily in en- slaving his fellow countrymen ; but as it is, he is lording it over men who are no cowards, but who remember the precepts of Solon and are indignant at their bonds, and who will not endure the supremacy of a tyrant. But if Pisistratus does possess the city to-day, still I have no expectation that the supreme power will ever descend to his children. For it is impossible that men who have lived in freedom and in the enjoyment of most excellent laws should be slaves perma- nency ; but as for yourself, do not you go wandering about at random, but come and visit me, for here there is no supreme ruler to be formidable to you ; but if while you are wandering about any of the friends of Pisistratus should fiall in with you, I fear you might suffer some misfortune.

He then wrote thus : —

X. But Demetrius says that some writers report that he used to receive food from the nymphs and keep it in a bullock's hoof; and that eating it in small quantities he never

PHERECYDEa 63

required any evacuations, and was never seen eating. And Timsus mentions him in his second book.

XI. Some authors say also that the Cretans sacrifice to him as a god, for they say that be was the wisest of men ; and accordingly, that when he saw the port of Munychia,* at Athens, he said that the Athenians did not know how many evils that place would bring upon them : since, if they did, they would tear it to pieces with their teeth ; and he said this a long time before the event to which he alluded. It is said also, that he at first called himself JEajcus ; and that he fore- told to the Lacedsemonians the defeat which they should suffer from the Arcadians ; and that he pretended that he had lived several times. But Theopompus, in his Strange Stories, says that when he was building the temple of the Nymphs, a voice burst forth from heaven ; — " Oh ! Epimenides, build this temple, not for the Nymphs but for Jupiter.*' He also fore- told to the Cretans the defeat of the Lacedaemonians by the Arcadians, as has been said before. And, indeed, they were beaten at Orchomenos.

XII. He pretended also, that he grew old rapidly, in the same number of days as he had been years asleep ; at least, BO Theopompus says. But Mysonianus, in his Coincidences, says, that the Cretans call him one of the Curetes. And the Lacedasmonians preserve his body among them, in obedience to some oracle, as Sosilius the LacedsBmonian says.

XIII. There were also two other Epimenides, one the genealogist ; the other, the man who wrote a history of Rhodes in the Doric dialect

LIFE OF PHERECYDES.

I* Phrbecydes was a Syrian, the son of Babys, and, as Alex- ander says, in his Successions, he had been a pupil of Pittacus.

* This refers to the result of the war which Antipater, who became i^ent of Macedonia on the death of Alexander the Great, carried on against the confederacy of Greek states, of which Athens was the head ; and in which, after having defeated them at Cranon, he com- pelled the Athenians to aboUsh the democracyi and to admit a garrison into Mnnychia*

54 LI7ES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

II. Theopompus says that he was the first person who ever wrote among the Greeks on the subject of Natural Philosophy and the Gods. And there are many maryellous stories told of him. For it is said that he was walking along the sea-shore at Samos, and that seeing a ship sailing by with a fair wind, he said that it would soon sink ; and presently it sank before their eyes. At another time he was drinking some water which had been drawn up out of a well, and he foretold that within three days there would be an earthquake ; and there was one. And as he was going up to Olympia, and had arrived at Messene, he advised his entertainer, Ferilaus, to migrate from the city with all his family, but that Perilaus would not be guided by him ; and afterwards Messene was taken.

III. And he is said to have told the LacedaBmonians to honour neither gold nor silver, as Theopompus says in his Marvels ; and it is reported that Hercules laid this injunc- tion on him in a dream, and that the same night he appeared also to the kings of Sparta, and enjoined them to be guided by Pherecydes ; but some attribute these stories to Pythagoras.

IV. And Hermippus relates that when there was a war between the Ephesians and Magnesians, he, wishing the Ephe- sians to conquer, asked some one, who was passing by, from whence he came ? and when he said, " From Ephesus," " Drag me now," said he, " by the legs, and place me in the terrritory of the Magnesians, and tell your fellow countrymen to bury me there after they have got the victory ; and that he went and re- ported that Pherecydes had given him this order. And so they went forth the next day and defeated the Magnesians ; and as Pherecydes was dead, they buried him there, and paid him very splendid honours.

V. But some writers say that he went to Delphi, and threw himself down from the Corycian hill ; Aristoxenus, in his History of Pythagoras and his Friends, says that Pherecydes fell sick and died, and was buried by Pythagoras in Delos ; But others say that ho died of the lousy disease ; and when Pythagoras came to see him, and asked him how he was, he put his finger through the door, and said, " You may see by my skin." And from this circumstance that expression passed into a proverb among the philosophers, when alFairs are going on badly : and those who apply it to affairs that are go ng on well, make a blunder. He used to say, also, that ti^e Gods call their table Ouat^tg.

PHEKECTDES; 55

VI. But Andron, the Ephesian, sajs that there were two men of the name of Fherecydes, both Syrians : one an astro- nomer, and the other a writer on God and the Divine Nature ; and that this last was the son of Babjs, who was also the master of Pythagoras. But Eratosthenes asserts that there was but one, who was a Syrian ; and that the other Pherecydes was an Athenian, a genealogist ; and the work of the Syrian Phere- cydes is preserved, and it begins thus : — " Jupiter, and Time, and Chthon existed externally." And the name of Gthonia became Tellus, after Jupiter gave it to her as a reward. A sun-dial is also preserved, in the island of Syra, of his making.

YII. But Duris, in the second book of his Boundaries, says that this epigram was written upon' him : —

The limit of all wifldom is in me ;

And would be, were it larger. But report

To my Pythagoras that he's the first

Of all the men that tread the Grecian soil ;

I shall not speak a falsehood, saying this.

And Ion, the Chian, says of him :—

Adorned wiih valour while alive, and modesty. Now that he's dead he still exists in peace ;

For, like the wise Pythagoras, he studied The manners and the minds of many nations.

And I myself have composed an epigram on him in the Phere- cratean metre : —

The story is reported, That noble Pherecydes Whom Syros calls her own. Was eaten up by lice ; And so he bade his friends, Convey his corpse away ^To the Magnesian land. That he might victory give To holy Ephesus. For well the Qod had said, {Though he alone did know Th' oracular prediction). That this was fate's decree. So in .that land he lies. This then is surely true. That those who're really wise Are useful while alive. And e'en when breath has left them.

56 UVES OF EmNENT PHILOSOPHERS.

VIII. And he flourished about the fifitj-ninth Olympiad. There is a letter of his extaut in the following terms : —

PHEBECTDES TO THALE8.

Maj you die happily when &,te oyertakes you. Disease has seized upon me at the same time that I received your letter. I am all over lice, and sufifering likewise under a low fever. Accordingly, I have charged my servants to convey this book of mine to you, after they have buried me. And do you, if you think fit, alter consulting with the other wise men, publish it ; but if you do not approve of doing so, then keep it impubUshed, for I am not entirely pleased with it myself. The subject is not one about which there is any certain knowledge, nor do I imdertake to say that I have arrived at the truth ; but I have advanced arguments, from which any one who occupies himself with speculations on the divine nature, may make a selection ; and as to other points, he must exercise his intellect, for I speak obscurely throughout I, myself, as I am afflicted more severely by this disease every day, no longer admit any phy- sicians, or any of my friends. But when they stand at the door, and ask me how I am, I put out my finger to them through the opening of the door, and show them how I am eaten up with the evil ; and I desired them to come to-morrow to the funeral of Pherecydes.

These, then, are they who were called wise men ; to which list some writers add the name of Pisistratus. But we must also speak of the philosophers. And we will begin first with the Ionic philosophy, the founder of which school was Thales, who was the master of Anaximander.

67

BOOK 11.

LIFE OF ANAXIMANDEK.

I. Anaximandeb, the son of Praxiadas, was a citizen of Miletas.

II. He used to assert that the principle and primarj element of all things was the Infinity, giving no exact definition as to whether he meant air or water, or anything else. And he said that the parts were susceptible of change, but that the whole was unchangeable ; and that the earth lay in the middle, being placed there as a sort of centre, of a spherical shape. The moon, he said, had a borrowed light, and borrowed it from the sun ; and the sun he affirmed to be not less than the earth, and the purest possible fire.

III. He also was the first discoverer of the gnomon; and he placed some in Lacedsemon on the sun-dials there, as Pharo-

, rinus says in his Universal History, and they showed the solstices and the equinoxes ; he also made clocks. He was the first person, too, who drew a map of the earth and sea, and he also made a globe ; and he published a concise statement of what- ever opinions he embraced or entertained ; and this treatise was met with by Apollodorus, the Athenian.

IV. And Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, states, that in the second year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad, he was sixty-four years old. And soon after he died, having flourished much about the same time as Polycrates, the tyrant, of Samos. They say that when he sang, the children laughed ; and that he, hearing of this, said, '* We must then sing better for the sake of the children."

Y. There was also another Anaximander, a historian ; and he too was a Milesian, and wrote in the Ionic dialect.

LIFE OF ANAXIMENES.

I. Anaximekes, the son of Eurystratus, a Milesian, was a pupil of Anaximander ; but some say that he was also a pupil of Parmenides. He said that the principles of everything

5^ LIVES OF EMIKENT PHILOSOPHEBS.

were the air, and the Infinite ; and that the stars moved not under the earth, but around the earth. He wrote in the pure unmixed Ionian dialect. And he lived, according to the state- ments of Apollodorus, in the sixty-third Olympiad, and died about the time of the taking of Sardis.

II. There were also two other persons of the name of Anaximenes, both citizens of Lampsacus ; one an orator and the other a historian, who was the son of the sister of the orator, and who wrote an account of the exploits of Alexander.

III. And this philosopher wrote the following letters : —

ANAXIMENES TO PTTHAOOBAS.

Thales, the son of Euxamias, has died in his old age, by an unfortunate accident. In the evening, as he was accus- tomed to do, he went forth out of the vestibule of his house with his maid-servant, to observe the stars : and (for he had forgotten the existence of the place) while he was looking up towards the skies, he fell down a precipitous place. So now the astronomer of Miletus has met with thiis end. But we who were his pupils cherish the recollection of the man, and so do our children and our own pupils : and we will lecture on his principles. At all events, tlfe beginning of all wisdom ought to be attributed to Thales.

IV. And again he writes :^

ANAXIMENES TO PTTHAOOBAS.

You are more prudent than we, in that you have migrated from Samos to Crotona, and live there in peace. For the descendants of iEacus commit unheard-of crimes, and tyrants never cease to oppress the Milesians. The king of the Medes too is formidable to us : unless, indeed, we choose to become tributary to him. But the lonians are on the point of engaging in war with the Medes in the cause of universal freedom. For if we remain quiet there is no longer any hope of safety for us. How then can Anaximenes apply his mind to the contemplation of the skies, while he is in perpetual fear of death or slavery ? But you are beloved by the people of Crotona, and by all the rest of the Italians ; and pupils flock to you, even from Sicily.

ANAXAGORAS. 59

LIFE OF ANAXAGORAS.

I. ANAXAGORAS, the son of Hegesibulus, or Eubulus, was a citizen of Clazomense. He was a pupil of Anaximenes, .and was the first philosopher who attributed mind to matter, beginning his treatise on the subject in the following manner (and the whole treatise is written in a most beautiful and magnificent style) : " All things were mixed up together ; then Mind came and airranged them all in distinct order." On which account he himself got the same name of Mind. And Timon speaks thus of him in his Silli : —

They say too that wise Anaxagoras Deserves immortal fame ; they call him Mmd, Because, as he doth teach, Mind came iq season, Arranging all which was oonfus'd before.

II. He was eminent for his noble birth and for his riches, and still more so for his magnanimity, inasmuch as he gave up all his patrimony to his relations ; and being blamed by thera for his neglect of his estate, " Why, then," said he, " do not you take care of it?*' And at last he abandoned it entirely, and devoted himself to the contemplation of subjects of natural philosophy, disregarding politics. So that once when some said to him, " You have no affection for your country," " Be silent," said he, " for I have the greatest affection for my country," pointing up to heaven.

III. It is said, lliat at the time of the passage of the Hellespont by Xerxes, he was twenty years old, and that he lived to the age of seventy-two. But Apollodorus, in his Chronicles says that he flourished in the seventieth Olympiad, and that he died in the first year of the seventy-eighth. And he began to study philosophy at Athens, in the archonship of Gallias, being twenty years of age, as Demetrius Phalerius teUs us in his Catalogue of the Archons, and they say that he remained at Athens thirty yeara.

IV. He asserted that the sun was a mass of burning iron, greater than Peloponnesus ; (that some attribute this doc- trine to Tantalus), and that the moon contained houses, and also hills and ravines : and that the primary elements of everything were similarities of parts ; for as we say that gold consists of a quantity of grains combined togedier, so too is the universe formed of a number of small bodies of similar

60 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

parts. He further taught that Mind was the principle of motion : and that of hodies the heavy ones, such as the earth, occupied the lower situations ; and the light ones, such as fire, occupied the higher places, and that the middle spaces were assigned to water and air. And thus that the sea rested upon the earth, which was hroad, the moisture heing all evaporated hj the sun. * And he said that the stars originally moved ahout in irregular confusion, so that at first the pole star, which is continuallj visible, always appeared in the zenith, but that afterwards it acquired a certain declination. And that the milky way was a reflection of the light of the sun when the stars did not appear. The comets he considered to be a concourse of planets emitting rays : and the shooting stars he thought were sparks as it were leaping from the firmament. The winds he thought were caused by the rari- fication of the atmosphere, which was produced by the sun. Thunder, he said, was produced by the collision of the clouds ; and lightning by the rubbing together of the clouds. Earth- quakes, he said, were produced by the return of the air into the earth. All animals he considered were originally gene- rated out of moisture, and heat, and earthy particles : and subsequently from one another. And males he considered were derived from those on the right hand, and females from those on the left.

V. They say, also, that he predicted a fall of the stones which fell near JSgospotami, and which he said would fall from the sun: on which account Euripides, who was a disciple of his, said in his Phaethon that the sun was a golden clod of earth. He went once to Olympia wrapped in a leathern cloak as if it were going to rain ; and it did rain. And they say that he once replied to a man who asked him whether the mountains at Lampsacus would ever become sea, " Yes, if time lasts long enough.*'

YI. Being once asked for what end he had been bom, he said« *' For the contemplation of the sun, and moon, and heaven." A man once said to him, *'You have lost the Athenians ;" " No," said he, " they have lost me." When he beheld the tomb of Mausolus, he said, *' A costly tomb is an image of a petrified estate." And he comforted a man who was grieving because he was dying in a foreign land, by telling him, " The descent to hell is the same from every place."

; ANAXA60RAS. 61

VII. He appears to bave been the first person (according to the account given by Pharorinus in his Universal History), who said that the Poem of Homer was composed in praise of virtue and justice : and Metro, of Lampsacus, who was a friend of his, adopted this opinion, and advocated it ener- getically, and Meljodorus was the first who seriously studied the natural philosophy developed in the vnritings of ^e great poet.

VIII* Anaxagoras was also the first man who ever wrote a work in prose ; and Silenus, in the first book of his Histories, says, that in the archonship of Lysanias a large stone fell from heaven ; and that in reference to this event Anaxagoras said, that the whole heaven was composed of stones, and that by its rapid revolutions they were all held together ; and when those revolutions get slower, they fall down.

IX. Of his trial there are different accoonts given. For Sotion, in his Succession of the Philosophers, says, that he was persecuted for impiety by Cleon, because he said that the sun was a fiery ball of iron. And thougli Pericles, who had been his pupil, defended him, he was, nevertheless, fined five talents and banished. But Satyrus, in his Livesr, says that it was Thucydides by whom he was impeached, as Thucydides vas of the opposite party to Pericles ; and that he was pro- secuted not only for impiety, but also for Medison ; and that he was condemned to death in his absence. And when news was brought him of two misfortunes — his condemnation, and the death of his children ; concerning the condemnation he said, " Nature has long since condemned both them and me." But about his children, he said, " I knew that I had become the father of mortals." Some, however, attribute this saying to Solon, and others to Xenophon. And Demetrius Phale- reus, in his treatise on Old Age, says that Anaxagoras buried them with his own hands. But Hermippus, in his Lives, says that he was thrown into prison for the purpose of being put to death : but that Pericles came forward and inquired if any one brought any accusation against him respecting his course of life. And as no one alleged anything against bun : " I then/' eaid he, *' am his disciple : do not you then be led away by calumnies to put this man to death ; but be guided by me, and release him." And he was released. But, as he was indignant at the insult which had been offered to him, he left the city.

6*^ LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOBOFHEBS.

But Hieronjmus, in the second book of his Miscellaneous Commentaries, says that Pericles produced him before the court, tottering and emaciated bjr disease, so ;that he was released rather out of pity, than bj any deliberate decision on the merits of his case. And thus mudi may be said about his trial. Some people have fancied that he was very hostile to Demochtus, because he did not succeed in getting admission to him for the purposes of conversation. . X. And at last, having gone to Lampsacus, he died in that city. And it is said, that when the governors of the city asked him what he would }ike to have done for him, he replied, " That they would allow the children to play every year during the month in which he died." And this custom is kept, up even now. And when he was dead, the citizens of Lampsacus buried him with great honours, and wrote this epitaph on him : —

Here Anaxagoras lies, who reached of truth The farthest bounds in heavenly speculations.

We ourselves also have written an epigram on him: —

Wise Anaxagoras did call the sun A mass of glowing iron ; and Jbr this Death was to be his fate. But Pericles Then saved his friend ; but afterwards he died A victim of a weak philosophy.

XI. There were also three other people of the name of Anaxagoras ; none of whom combined all kinds of knowledge ; But one was an orator and a pupil of Isocrates ; another was a statuary, who is mentioned by Antigonus; another is a grammarian, a pupil of Zenodotus.

LIFE OF ARCHELAUS.

I. Aechklaus was a citizen of either Athens or Miletus, and his father's name was Apollodorus ; but, as some say, Mydon. He was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and the master of Socrates.

II. He was the first person who imported the study of natural philosophy from Ionia to Athens, and he was called the Natural Philosopher, because natural philosophy terminated with him, as Socrates introduced ethical philosophy. And it seems probable that Archelaus too meddled in some degree

SOCRATES. 63

with moral philosophy ; for in his philosophical speculations he discussed laws and what was honourable and just. And Socrates borrowed from him ; and becaused he enlarged his principles, he was thought to be the inventor of them.

III. He used to say that there were two primary causes of generation, heat and cold ; and that all animals were generated out of mud : and that what are accounted just and disgraceful are not so by nature, but only by law. And his reasoning proceeds in this way. He says, that water being melted by heat, when it is submitted to the action of fiire, by which it is solidified, hecomes earth ; and when it is liquefied, becomes air. And, therefore, the earth is surrounded by air and influ- enced by it, and so is the air by the revolutions of fire. And he says that animals are generated out of hot earth, which sends up a thick mud something like milk for their food. So too he says that it produced men.

And he was the first person who said that sound is produced by the percussion of the air ; and that the sea is filtered in the hollows of the earth in its passage, and so is condensed ; and that the sun is the greatest of the stars, and that the universe is boundless.

IV. But there were three other people of the name of Archelaus : one, a geographer, who described the countries traversed by Alexander ; the second, a man who wrote a poem on objects which have two natures ; and the third, an orator, who wrote a book containing the precepts of his art.

LIFE OF SOCRATES.

I. Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a statuary, and of Phaenarete, a midwife ; as Plato records in his Miasbetus ; he was a citizen of Athens, of the borough of Alopece.

II. Some people believed that he assisted Euripides in his poems ; in reference to which idea, Moresimachus speaks as follows : —

The Phrygians are a new play of Euripides, But Socrates has laid the mala foundation.*

* <Ppvyava, sticks or faggots.

64 LIVES OF EMINENT FHIL0S0PHEB8.

And again he says : —

Euripides: pccched up by Socrates.

And Callias, in his Captives, says : —

A. Are you so proud, giving yourself such airs f JB, And well I may, for Socrates is the cause.

And Aristophanes says, in his Clouds : —

This is Euripides, who doth compose Those argumentative wise tragedies.

III. But, having been a pupil of Anaxagoras, as some people say, but of Damon as the other stoiy goes, related by Alexander in his Successions, after the condemnation of Anaxagoras, he became a disciple of Archelaus, the natural philosopher. And, indeed, Aristoxenus says that he was veiy intimate with him.

lY. But Duris says that he was a slave, and employed in carving stones. And some say that the Graces in the Acropolis are his work ; and they are clothed figures. And that it is in reference to this that Timon says, in his Silli : —

From them proceeded the stone polisher. The reasoning legislator, the enchanter Of all the Qreeks, making them subtle aiguerB^ A cunning pedant^ a shrewd Attic quibbler.

y. For he was very clever in all rhetorical exercises, as Idomeneus also assures us. But the thirty tyrants forbade him to give lessons in the art of speaking and arguing, as Xenophon tells us. And Aristophanes turns him into ridicule in his Comedies, as making the worse appear the better reason. For he was the first man, as Pharorinus says in his Universal History, who, in conjunction with his disciple ^schines, taught men how to become orators. And Idomeneus makes the same assertion in his essay on the Socratic School. He» likewise, was the first person who conversed about human life ; and was also the fOrst philosopher who was condemned to death and executed. And Aristoxenus, the son of Spin- tharas, says that he lent money in usury; and that he collected llie interest and principal together, and then, when he had got the interest, he lent it out again. And Demetrius, of Byzantium, says that it was Criton who made him leave

SOCRATEa 65

, his workshop and instruct men, out of tlie admiration which he conceived for his abilities.

VI. He then, perceiving that natural philosophy had no immediate bearing on our interests, began to enter upon moral speculations, both in his workshop and in the market- place. And he said that the objects of his search were —

Whatever good or harm can man hefall In his own house.

And very often, while arguing and discussing points that arose, he was treated with great violence and beaten, and pulled about, and laughed at and ridiculed by the multitude. But he bore all this with great equanimity. So that once, when he had been kicked and buffeted about, and had borne it all patiently, and some one expressed his surprise, he said, " Suppose an ass had kicked me, would you have had me bring an action against him T And this is the account of Demetrius.

VII. But he had no need of travelling (though most philosophers did travel), except when he was bound to serve in the army. But all the rest of his life he remained in the same place, and in an argumentative spirit he used to dispute with all who would converse vnth him, not with the purpose of taking away their opinions from them, so much as of learn- ing the truth, as far as he could do so, himself. And they say that Euripides gave him a small work of Heraclitus to read, and asked him afterwards what he thought of it, and he replied, " What I have understood is good ; and so, I think, what I have not understood is; only the book requires a Belian diver to get at the meaning of it." He paid great attention also to the training of the body, and was always in excellent condition himself. Accordingly, he joined in the expedition to Amphipolis, and he it was who took up and saved Xenophon in the battle of Delian, when he had fallen from his horse ; for when all the Athenians had fled, he retreated quietly, turning round slowly, and watching to repel a-ny one who attacked him. He also joined in the expedition to PotidaBa, which was undertaken by sea ; for it was impossible to get there by land, as the war impeded the communication. And they say that on this occasion he remained the whole flight in one place ; and that though he had deserved the prize

F

66 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHEB&

f

of pre-eminent valour, he yielded it to Alcibiades, to whom Aristippus, in the fourth book of his treatise on the Luxury of the Ancients, says that he was greatly attached. But Ion, of Chios, says, that while he was a very young man he left Athens, and went to Samos with Archelaus. And Aristotle says, that he went to Delphi ; and Pharorinus also, in the first book of his Commentaries, says that he went to the Isthmus.

VIII. He was a man of great firmness of mind, and very much attached to the democracy, as was plain from his not submitting to Critias, when he ordered him to bring Leon of Salamis, a very rich man, before the thirty, for the purpose of being murdered. And he alone voted for the acquittal of the ten generals ;• and when it was in his power to escape out of prison he would not do it ; and he reproved those who bewailed his fate, and even while in prison, he delivered those beautiful discourses which we still possess.

IX. He was a contented and venerable man. And once, as Pamphila says, in the seventh book of her Commen- taries, when Alcibiades offered him a large piece of ground to build a house upon, he said, " But if I wanted shoes, and you had given me a piece of leather to make myself shoes, I should be laughed at if I took it." And often, when he beheld the multitude of things which were being sold, he would say to himself, " How many things are there which I do not want." And he was continually repeating these iambics :—

For silver plate and purple useful are "^ For actors on the sti^, but not for men.

And he showed his scorn of Archelaus the Macedonian, and Scopas the Crononian, and Euiylochus of Larissa, when he refused to accept their money, and to go and visit them. And he was so regular in his way of living, that it happened more than once when there was a plague at Athens, that he was the only person who did not catch it.

X. Aristotle says, that he had two wives. The first was Xanthippe, by whom he had a son named Lamprocles ; the second was Myrto, the daughter of Aristides the Just ; and he took her without any dowry, and by her he had two sons, Sophroniscus and Menexenus. But some say that Myrto was

* After the battle of Arginusn.

SOCRATES. 67

his first wife. And some, among whom are Satyrus, and Hieronymus, of Ehodes, say that he had them both at the same time. For they say that the Athenians, on account of the scarcity of men, passed a YOte, with the view of increasing the population, that a man might marry one citizen, and might also have children by another who should be legitimate ; on which account Socrates did so.

XI. And he was a man able to look down upon any who mocked him. And he prided himself upon the simplicity of his way of life ; and never exacted any pay from his pupils. And he used to say, that the man who ate with the greatest appetite, had the least need of delicacies ; and that he who drank with the greatest appetite, was the least inclined to look for a draught which is not at hand ; and that those who want fewest thmgs are nearest to the Gods. And thus much, indeed, one may learn from the comic poets ; who, without perceiving it, praise him in the very matters for which they ridicule him. Aristophanes speaks thus : —

Prudent man, who thus with justice long for mighty wisdom,

Happiness will be your lot in Athens, and all Greece too ;

For youVe a noble memory, and plenty of invention.

And patience dwells within your mind, and you are never tired.

Whether you're standing still or walking ; and you care not for cold.

Nor do you long for breakfast time, nor e'er give in to hunger ;

But wine and gluttony you shun, and and all such kind of follies.

And Ameipsias introduces liim on the stage in a cloak, and speaks thus of him : —

0 Socrates, among few men the best,

And among many vainest ; here at last

You come to us courageously — ^but where.

Where did you get that clos^ ? so strange a garment^

Some leather cutter must have given you

By way of joke : and yet this worthy man,

Though ne'er so hungry, never flatters any one.

Aristophanes too, exposes his contemptuous and arrogant Bposition, speaking thus : —

Ton strut along the streets, and look around yon proudly, And barefoot many ills endure, and hold your head above us.

And yet, sometimes he adapted himself to the occasion and dressed handsomely. As, for instance, in the banquet ofs Plato, where he is represented as going to find Agathon.

F 2

68 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

XII. He was a man of great ability, both in exhorting men to, and dissuading them from, any course ; as, for instance, having discoursed with Thesetetus on the subject of knowledge, he sent him away almost inspired, as Plato says. And when Euthyphron had commenced a prosecution against his father for having killed a foreigner, he conversed with him on the subject of piety, and turned him from his purpose : and by his exhortations he made Lysis a most moral man. For he was very ingenious at deriving arguments from existing circum- stances. And so he mollified his son Lamprocles when he was very angry with his mother, as Xenophon mentions some- where in his works; and he wrought upon Glauson, the brother of Plato, who was desirous to meddle with affairs of state, and induced him to abandon his purpose, because of his want of experience in such matters, as Xenophon relates. And, on the contrary, he persuaded Charmidas to devote him- self to politics, because he was a man very well calculated for such business. He also inspired Iphicrates, the general, with courage, by showing him the gamecocks of Midias the barber, pluming themselves against those of Callias ; and Glauemides said, that the state ought to keep him carefully, as if he were a pheasant or a peacock. He used also to say, that it was a strange thing that every one could easily tell what property he had, but was not able to name all his friends, or even to tell their number ; so careless were men on that subject. Once when he saw Euclid exceedingly anxious about some dialectic arguments, he said to him, " O Euclid, you will acquire a power of mauagiug sophists, but not of governing men." For he thought that subtle hair-splitting on those subjects was quite useless ; as Plato also records in the Eu- thydemus.

XIII. And wlien Charmidas offered him some slaves, with the view to his making a profit of them, he would not have them ; and, as some people say, he paid no regard to the beauty of Alcibiades.

XIV. He used to praise leisure as the most valuable of pos- sessions, as Xenophon tells us in his Banquet. And it was a saying of his that there was one only good, namely, knowledge ; and one only evil, namely ignorance ; that riches and high birth had nothing estimable in them, but that, on the contrary, they were wholly evil. Accordingly, when some one told him

SOCBATES. 69

that the mother of Antisthenes was a Thracian woman, ** Did jou suppose," said be, '' that so noble a man must be bom of two Adienians ?" And when Fhaedo was reduced to a state of slavery, he ordered Crito to ransom him, and taught him, and made him a philosopher.

XV. And, moreover, he used to learn to play on the lyre when he had time, saying, that it it was not absurd to learn anything that one did not know ; and further, he used fre- quently to dance, thinking such an exercise good for the health of the body, as Xenophon relates in his Banquet

XVI. He used also to say that the daemon foretold the future to him ; * and that to begin well was not a trifling thing, but yet not far from a trifling thing ; and that he knew nothing, except the fact of his ignorance. Another saying of his was, that those who bought things out of season, at an extravagant price, expected never to hve till the. proper season for them. Once, when he was asked what was the virtue of a young man, he said, '* To avoid excess in every- thing." And he used tx) say, that it was necessary to learn geometry only so fai^as might enable a man to measure land for the purposes of buying and selling. And when Euripides, in his Augur, had spoken thus of virtue : —

'Tis best to leave these subjects undisturbed ;

he rose up and left the theatre, saying that it was an absurdity to think it right to seek for a slave if one could not And him, but to let virtue be altogether disregarded. The question was once put to him by a man whether he would advise him to. many or not ? And he replied, ** Whichever you do, you will repent it." He often said, that he wondered at those who made stone statues, when he saw how careful they were that the stone should be like the man it was intended to represent, but how careless they were of them- selves, as to guarding against being like the stone. He used also to recommend young men to be constantly looking in the glass, in order that, if they were handsome, they might be worthy of their beauty ; and if they were ugly, they

* '^This is not quite correct Socrates believed that the daemon which attended him, limited his warnings to his own conduct ; pre- venting him from doing what was wrong, but not prompting him to do right'' — See Grot^t admwatlU chapter on Socrates, Mitt of Gfreece, voLv.

70 LIVES OP EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

might conceal their unsightly appearance by their accomplish- ments. He once invited some rich men to dinner, and when Xanthippe wa« ashamed of their insufficient appointments, he said, "Be of good cheer ; for if our guests are sensible men, they will bear with us ; and if they are not, we need not care about them." He used to say, " That other men lived to eat, but that he ate to live.** Another saying of his was, " That to have a regard for the worthless multitude, was like the case of a man who refused to take one piece of money of four drachmas as if it were bad, and then took a heap of such coins and ad- mitted them to be good." When ^schines said, "I am a poor man, and have nothing else, but I give you myself;" " Do you not," he replied, ** perceive that you are giving me what is of the greatest value ?" He said to some one, who was expressing indignation at being overlooked when the thirty had seized on the supreme power, ** Do you, then, repent of not being a tyrant too ?'* A man said to him, " The Athenians have con- demned you to death.'* "And nature,'* he replied, "has con- demned them.*' But some attribute this answer to Anaxagoras. When his wife said to him, " You die unde§ervedly." " Would you, then,*' he rejoined, " have had me deserve death ?** He thought once that some one appeared to him in a dream, and said : —

On the third day you*ll come to lovely Phthia.

And so he said to ^Eschines, " In three days I shall die." And when he was about to drink the hemlock, ApoUodorus presented him with a handsome robe, that he might expire in it ; and he said, " Why was my own dress good enough to live in, and not good enough to die in ?** When a person said to him, ** Such an one speaks ill of you ;'* " To be sure,** said he, " for he has never learnt to speak well.** When An- tisthenes turned the ragged side of his cloak to the light, he said, " I see your silly vanity through the holes in your cloak.** When some one said to him, " Does not that man abuse you ?" '•* No,** said he, " for that does not apply to me.* It was a saying of his, too, " That it is a good thing for a man to offer himself cheerfully to the attacks of the comic writers ; for then, if they say anything worth hearing, one will be able to mend ; and if they do not, then all they say is unimportant.** XYII. He said once to Xanthippe, who first abused him.

SOCRATES. 71

and tben threw water at him, " Did I not say tliat Xanthippe was thundering now, and would soon rain ?" When Alcibiades said to him, " The abusive temper of Xanthippe is intolerable ;" " But I," he rejoined, " am used to it, just as I should be if I were always hearing the noise of a pulley ; and you yourself endure to hear geese cackling." To which Alcibiades answered, " Yes, but they bring me eggs and goslings." " Well," rejoined Socrates, " and Xanthippe brings me children." Once, she attacked him in the market-place, and tore his cloak off ; his friends advised him to keep her off with his hands ; ** Yes, by Jove,'* said he, " that while we are boxing you may all cry out, * Well done, Socrates, well done, Xanthippe.'** And he used to say, that one ought to live with a restive woman, just as horsemen manage violent-tempered horses ; " and as they,'* said he, " when they have once mastered them, are easily able to manage all others ; so I, after managing Xanthippe, can easily live with any one else whatever."

XVIII. And it was in consequence of such sayings and actions as these, that the priestess at Delphi was witness in his fav^r, when she gave Chserephon this answer, which is so universally known : —

Socrates of all mortals is the wisest.

In consequence of which answer, he incurred great envy ; and he brought envy also on himself, by convicting men who gave themselves airs of foUy and ignorance, as undoubtedly he did to Anytus ; and as is shown in Plato's Meno. For he, not being able to bear Socrates' jesting, first of all set Aristophanes to attack him, and then persuaded Melitus to institute a pro- secution against him, on the ground of impiety and of corrupt- ing the youth of the city. Accordingly Melitus did institute the prosecution ; and Polyeuctus pronounced the sentence, as Pharorinus records in his Universal History. And Polycrates, the sophist, wrote the speech which was delivered, as Her- mippus says, not Anytus, as others say. And Lycon, the demagogue, prepared everything necessary to support the irn- peachment ; but Antisthenes in his Successions of the Phi- losophers, and Plato in his Apology, say that these men brought the accusation : — ^Anytus, and Lycon, and Melitus ; Anytus, acting against him on behalf of the magistrates, and

72 UYES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHEBS.

because of his political principles ; Lycon, on behalf of the orators; and Melitus on behalf of the poets, all of whom Socrates used to pull to pieces. But Pharorinus, in the first book of his Commentaries, says, that the speech of Poljcrates against Socrates is not the genuine one ; for in it there is mention made of the walls having been restored by Conon, which took place six years after the death of Socrates ; and certainly this is true.

XIX. But the sworn informations, on which the trial pro- ceeded, were drawn up in this fashion ; for they are preserved to this day, says Pharorinus, in the temple of Cybele: — " Me- litus, the son of Melitus, of Pittea, impeaches Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, of Alopece : Socrates is guilty, inasmuch as he does not believe in the Gods whom the city worslups, but in- troduces other strange deities ; he is also guilty, inasmuch as he corrupts the young men, and the punishment he has incurred is death."

XX. But the philosopher, after Lysias had prepared a de- fence for him, read it through, and said — " It is a very fine speech, Lysias, but is not suitable for me ; for it was manifestly the speech of a lawyer, rather than of a philosopher." And when Lysias replied, '' How is it possible, that if it is a good speech, it should not be suitable to you ?'' he said, " Just as fine clothes and handsome shoes would not be suitable to me." And when the trial was proceeding, Justus, of Tiberias, in his Garland, says that Plato ascended the tribune and said, " I, men of Athens, being the youngest of all those who have mounted the tribune . . . and that he was interrupted by the judges, who cried out xara^dvruv, that is to say, * Come down.'

XXI. So when he had been condemned by two hundred and eighty-one votes, being six more than were given in his favour, and when the judges Vere making an estimate of what punish- ment or fine should be inflicted on him, he said that he ought to be fined five and twenty drachmas ; but Eubulides says that he admitted that he deserved a fine of one hundred. And when the judges raised an outcry at this proposition, he said, " My real opinion is, that as a return for what has been done by me, I deserve a maintenance in the Prytaneum for the rest of my life." So they condemned him to death, by eighty votes more than they had originally found him guilty. And he was put into prison, and a few days afterwards he drank the hem-

SOCRATES. 73

«

lock, having held many adnurable conversations in the mean- time, which Plato has recorded in the Phsedo.

XXII. He also, according to some accounts, composed a psBan, which begins —

V Hail Apollo, King of Delos, 'v ^ Hail Diana^ Leto's child.

Bat Dionysidorus says that this psBan is not his. He also com- posed a fable, in the style of -^sop, not very artistically, and it begins —

^8op one day did this sage counsel give To the Corinthian magistrates : not to trust ^ The cause of virtue to the people's judgment.

XXIII. So he died ; but the Athenians immediately repented* of their iustiou, so that they closed all the palsBStr® and gymnasia ; and they banished his accusers, and condemned Melitus to death ; but they honoured Socrates with a brazen statue, whioh they erected in the place where the sacred vessels are kept ; and it was the work of Lysippus. But Anytus had already left Athens ; and the people of Heraclea banished him from that city the day of his arrival. Hut Socrates was not the only person who met with this treatment at the hands of the Athenians, but many other men received the same : for, as Heraclides says, they fined Homer fifty drachmas as a mad- man, and they said that lystSBus was out of his wits. But they honoured Astydamas, beforS ^schylus, with a brazen statue. And Euripides reproaches them for their conduct in his Pala- inedes, saying —

Ye have slain, ye have slain,

O Greeks, the all-wise nightingale.

The favourite of the Muses, guHtleBS alL

And enough has been said on this head.

But Philochorus says that Euripides died before Socrates ; and he was bom, as Apollodorus in his Chronicles asserts, in the archonship of Apsephion, in the fourth year of the seventy- seventh Olympiad, on the sixth day of the month Thargelion, when the Athenians purify their city, and when the citizens of Delos say that Diana was bom. And he died in the first

* Qrote gives good 'reasons for disbelieving this.

74 LIVES OF EMINENT PHIL080PHEBS.

year of the ninety-fifth Olympiad, being seventy years of age. And this is the calculation of Demetrius Phalereus, for some say that he was but sixty years old when he died.

XXIV. Both he and Euripides were pupils of Anaxagoras ; and Euripides was bom in the first year of the seventy-fifth Olympiad, in the archonship of Galliades. But Socrates appears to me to have also discussed occasionally subjects of natural philosophy, since he very often disputes about prudence and foresight, as Xenophon tells us ; although he at the same time asserts that all his conversations were about moral phi- losophy. And Plato, in his Apology, mentions the principles of Anaxagoras and other natural philosophers, which Socrates denies ; and he is in reality expressing his own sentiments about them, though he attributes them all to Socrates. And Aristotle tells us that a certain one of the Magi came from Syria to Athens, and blamed Socrates for many parts of his conduct, and also foretold that he would come to a violent death. And we ourselves have written this epigram on him —

Drink now, 0 Socrates, in the realms of Jove, For truly did the Cbd pronounce you wise, And he who said so is himself all wisdom : You drank the poison which your country gave, But they drank wisdom from your godlike voice.

XXV. He had, as Aristotle tells us in the third book of his Poetics, a contest with a man of^the name of Antiolochus of Lemnos, and with Antipho, an inteipreter of prodigies, as Pythagoras had with Cylon of Orotona ; and Homer while alive with Sagaris, and after his death with Xenophanes the Colophonian ; and Hesiod, too, in his lifetime with Dereops, and after his death with the same Xenophanes ; and Pindar with Aphimenes of Cos ; and Thales with Pherecydes ; and Bias with Salamis of Priene ; and Pittacus with Antimenides ; and Cellseus and Anaxagoras with Sosibrius ; and Simonides with Timocrea.

XXVI. Of those who succeeded him, and who are called the Socratic school, the chiefs were Plato, Xenophon, and Antis- thenes : and of the ten, as they are often called, the four most eminent were ^schines, Phsedo, Euclides, and Ari'stippus. But we miust first speak of Xenophon, and after him of An- tisthenes among the Cynics. Then of the Socratic school, and

XBNOPHON. 75

SO about Plato, since he is the chief of the ten sects, and the founder of the first Academy. And the regular series of them shall proceed in this manner.

XXVII. There was also another Socrates, a historian, who wrote a description of Argos ; and another, a peripatetic philo- sopher, a native of Bithynia; and another a writer of epi- grams ; and another a native of Cos, who wrote invocations to the Gods.

LIFE OF XENOPHON.

I. Xenophon, the son of Gryllus, a citizen of Athens, was of the borough of Erchia ; and he was a man of great modesty, and as handsome as can be imagined.

II. They say that Socrates met him in a nanx)w lane, and put his stick across it, and prevented him from passing by, asking him 'where all kinds of necessary things were sold. And when he had answered him, he asked him again where men where made good and virtuous. And as he did dot know, he said, " Follow me, then, and learn." And from this time forth, Xenophon became a follower of Socrates.

III. And he was the first person who took down conversa- tions as they occurred, and published them among men, calling them memorabilia. He was also the first man who wrote a history of philosophers.

IV. And Aristippus, in the fourth book of his treatise on Ancient Liuxury, says that he loved Clinias ; and that he said to him, " Now I look upon Clinias with more pleasure than upon all the other beautiful things which are to be seen among men ; and I would rather be blind as to all the rest of the world, than as to Clinias. And I am annoyed even with night and with sleep, because then I do not see him ; but I am veiy grateful to the sun and to daylight, because they show Clinas to me."

v. He became a friend of Cyrus in this manner He had an acquaintance, by name Proxenus, a Boeotian by birth, a pupil of Gorgias of Leontini, and a friend of Cyrus. He being in Sardis, staying at the court of Cyrus, wrote a letter to Athens

76 LIVES OF EMINJENT PHILOSOPHERS.

I

to Xenopbon, inviting him to come and be afriend of Cyrus. And Xenopbon sbowed tbe letter to Socrates, and asked bis advice. And Socrates bade bim go to Delpbi, and ask counsel of tbe God. And Xenopbon did so, and went to tbe God ; but the question be put was, not whether it was good for bim to go to Cyrus or not, but bow he should go ; for which Socrates blamed him, but still advised him to go. Accordingly he went to Cyrus, and became no less dear to him than Proxenus. And all the circumstances of the expedition and the retreat, he himself has sufficiently related to us.

VI. But he was at enmity with Menon the Pbarsalian, who was the commander of the foreign troops at tbe time of the expedition ; and amongst other reproaches, he says that he was much addicted to tbe worst kind of debauchery. And he reproaches a man of the name of Apollonides with having his ears bored.

VII. But after tbe expedition, and tbe disasters which took place in Pontus, and tbe violations of tbe truce by Seuthes, the king of the OdiyssB, be came into Asia to Agesilaus, the king of Lacedaemon, bringing with him tbe soldiers of Cyrus, to serve for pay ; and he became a very great friend of Agesilaus. And about tbe same time he was condemned to banishment by the Athenians, on the charge of being a far vourer of the Lacedsemonians. And being in Ephesus, and having a sum of money in gold, be gave half of it to Mega- byzus, the priest of Diana, to keep for him till bis return ; and if he never returned, then be was to expend it upon a statue, and dedicate that to the Goddess ; and with tbe other half he sent offerings to Delphi. From thence be went with Agesilaus into Greece, as Agesilaus was summoned to take part in the war against tbe Thebans. And the Lacedemonians made him a friend of their city.

VIII. After this he left Agesilaus and went to Scillus, which is a strong place in tbe district of Elis, at no great distance from the city. And a woman followed him, whose name was Philesia, as Demetrius the Magnesian relates ; and his sons, Gryllus and Diodorus, as Dinarchus states in the action against Xenopbon ;♦ and they were also called Dioscuri. And when

* The Greek is, Iv rtf irpbg Stvo^uvra inroaTaaiov — " airovTaaiov ^iKrj, an action against a freedman for having forsaken or slighted his frpocTaTtis" — L. <fc 8,

XBNOPHON. 77

Megabyzus came into the country, on the occasion of some public assembly, he took back the money and bought a piece of ground, and consecrated it to the Goddess ; and a river named Selmus, which is the same name as that of the river at Ephe- SOS, flows through the land. And there he continued hunting, and entertaining his friends, and writing histories. But Di- narchus says that the Lacedaemonians gave him a house and land. They say also that Philopides,the Spartan, sent him there, as a present, some slaves, who had been taken prisoners of war, natives of Dardanus, and that he located them as he pleased. And that the Eleans, having made an expedition against Scillus, took the place, as the Lacedaemonians dawdled in coming to its assistance.

IX. But then his sons escaped privily to Lepreum, with a few servants ; and Xenophon himself fled to Elis before the place fell ; and from thence he went to Lepreum to his chil- dren, and from thence he escaped in safety to Corinth, and settled in that city.

X. In the meantime, as the Athenians had passed a vote to go to the assistance of the Lacedaemonians, he sent his sons to Athens, to join in the expedition in aid of the Lacedae- monians ; for they had been educated in Sparta, as Diodes relates in his Lives of the Philosophers. Diodorus returned safe back again, without having at all distinguished himself in the battle. And he had a son who bore the same name as his brother Gryllus. But Gryllus, serving in the cavalry, (and the battle took place at Mantinea,) fought very gallantly, and was slain, as Ephorus tells us, in his twenty-fifth book ; Cephisodorus being the Captain of the cavalry, and Hegesides the commander-in-chief. Epaminondas also fell in this battle. And after the battle, they say that Xenophon offered sacrifice, wearing a crown on his head ; but when the news of the death of his son arrived, he took off the crown; hut after that, hearing that he had fallen gloriously, he put the crown on again. And some say that he did not even shed a tear, but said, ** I knew that I was the father of a mortal man." And Aristotle says, that innumerable writers wrote panegyrics and epitaphs upon Gryllus, partly out of a wish to gratify his father. And Hermippus, in his Treatise on Theo- phrastus, says that Isocrates also composed a panegyric on Gryllus. But Timon ridicules him in these words : —

78 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHEBS.

A silly couplet^ or e'en triplet of speeches^ Or longer series still, just such as Xenophon Might write, or Meagre^^schines.

Such, then, iras the life of Xenophon.

' XI. And he flourished about the fourth year of the ninety- fourth Olympiad ; and he took part in the expedition of Cyrus, in the archonship of Xensenetus, the year before the deadi of Socrates. And he died, as Stesiclides the Athenian states in his List of Archons and Conquerors at Olympia, in the first year of the hundred and fifth Olymiad, in the archonship of Callidemides ; in which year, Philip the son of Amyntas began to reign over the Macedonians. And he died at Corinth, as Demetrius the Magnesian says, being of a veiy advanced age.

XII. And he was a man of great distinction in all points, and very fond 'of horses and of dogs, and a great tactician, as is manifest from his writings. And he was a pious man, fond of sacrificing to the Gods, and a great authority as to what was due to tiiem, and a very ardent admirer and imitator of Socrates.

XIII. He also wrote near forty books ; though different critics divide them differently. He wrote an account of tlie expedition of Cyrus, to each book of which work he prefixed a summary, though he gave none of the whole history. He also wTote the Cyropaedia, and a history of Greece, and Memorabilia of Socrates, and a treatise called the Banquet, and an essay on CSconomy, and one on Horsemanship, and one on Breaking Dogs, and one on Managing Horses, and a Defence of "Socrates, and a Treatise on Eevenues, and one called Hiero, or the Tyrant, and one called Agesilaus ; one on the Constitution of the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, which, however, Demetrius the Magnesian says is not the work of Xenophon. It is said, also, that he secretly got possession of the books of Thucydides, which were previously unknown, and himself pubhshed them.

XIV. He was also called the Attic Muse, because of the sweetness of his diction, in respect of which he and Plato felt a spirit of rivalry towards one another, as we shall relate further in our life of Plato. And we ourselves have composed an epigram on him, which runs thus ;—

Not only up to Babylon for Cyrus Did Xenophon go, but now he's mounted up

^SCHINES. 79

*

The path which leads to Jove's eternal realms — For he, recountiiig the great deeds of Greece,

Displays his noble genius, and he shows

The depth of wisdom of his master Socrates.

And another which ends thus :— *

O Xenophon, if th' ungrateful countrymen

Of Czanon and Cecrops, banished you, Jealous of Cyrus' favour which he show'd you,.

Still hospitable Corinth, with glad hearty Beceived you, and you lived there happily,

And BO resolved to stay in that fair dty.

XY. But I have found it stated in some places that he flourished about the eighty-ninth Olympiad, at the same time as the rest of the disciples of Socrates. And Ister says, that he was banished by a decree of Eubulus, and that he was recalled by another decree proposed by the same person.

XVI. But there were seven people of the name of Xenophon. First of all, this philosopher of ours ; secondly, an Athenian, a brother of Pythostratus, who wrote the poem called the Theseid, and who wrote other works too, especially the lives of Epaminondas and Pelopidas ; the third was a physician of Cos ; the fourth, a man who wrote a history of Alcibiades ; the fifth, was a writer who composed a book full of fabulous prodigies ; the sixth, a citizen of Paros, a sculptor ; the seventh, a poet of the Old Comedy.

LIFE OF ^SCHINES.

I. iElscHiNES was the son of Charinus, the sausage-maker, but, as some writers say, of Lysanias ; he was a citizen of Athens, of an industrious disposition from his boyhood upwards, on which account he never quitted Socrates.

II. And this induced Socrates to say, the only one who knows how to pay us proper respect is the son of the ^usage- seller. Idomeneus asserts, that it was he who, in the prison, tried to persuade Socrates to make his escape, and not Crito. But that Plato, as he was rather inclined to favour Anstippus, attributed his advice to Crito.

III. And ^schines was calumniated on more than one occa-

80 LIVES OP EMIWBNT PHILOSOPHERS.

sion ; and especially by Menedemus of Eretria, who states that he appropriated many dialogues of Socrates as his own, having procured them from Xanthippe. And those of them which are called " headless," are exceedingly slovenly performances, showing nothing of the energy of Socrates. And Pisistratus, of Ephesus, used to say, that they were not the work of ^schines. There are seven of them, and most of them are stated by Persaeus to be the work of Pasiphon, of Eretria, and to have been inserted by him among the works of ^schines. And he plagiarised from the Little Cyrus, and the Lesser Hercules, of Antisthenes, and from the Alcibiades, and from the Dialogues of the other philosophers. The Dialogues then of ^schines, which profess to give an idea of the system of Socrates are, as I have said, seven in number. First of all, the Miltiades, which is rather weak; the Callias, the Axio- chus, the Aspasia, the Alcibiades, the Jelanges, and the Rhino. And they say that he, being in want, went to Sicily, to Diony- sius, and was looked down upon by Plato, but supported by Aristippus, and that he gave Dionysius some of his dialogues, and received presents for them.

IV. After that he came to Athens, and there he did not venture to practise the trade of a sophist, as Plato and Ari- stippus were in high reputation there. But he gave lectures for money, and wrote speeches to be delivered in the courts of law for persons under prosecution. On which account, Timon said of him, " The speeches of ^schines which do not convince any one." And they say that when he was in great straights through poverty, Socrates advised him to borrow of himself, by deducting some part of his expenditure in his food.

V. And even Aristippus suspected the genuineness of some of his Dialogues ; accordingly, they say that when he was reciting some of them at Megara, he ridiculed him, and said to him, " Oh ! you thief ; where did you get that ?"

VL And Polycritus, of Menda, in the first book of his History of Dionysius, says that he lived with the tyrant till he was deposed, and till the return of Dion to Syracuse ; and he says that Caramis, the tragedian, was also with him. And there is extant a letter of JEschines addressed to Dionysius.

VII. But he was a man well versed in rhetorical art, as is plain, from the defence of his father Phoeax, the general ; and from the works which he wrote in especial imitation of Gorgias,

L

ARisnppus. 81

of Leontini. And Lysias wrote an oration against bim ; entitling it. On Sycophancy ; from all which circumstances it is plain that he was a skilful orator. And one man is spoken of as his especial Mend, Aristotle, who was sumamed The Table.

VIII. Now Panaetius thinks that the Dialogues of the following disciples of the Socratic school are all genuine, — Plato, Xenophon, Antisthenes, and iEschines ; but he doubts about those which go under the names of Phsedon, and Euclides ; and he utterly repudiates all the others.

IX. And there were eight men of the name of ^schines. The first, this philosopher of ours ; the second was a man who wrote a treatise on Oratorical Art ; the third was the orator who spoke against Demosthenes ; the fourth was an Arcadian, a disciple of Isocrates ; the fifth was a citizen of Mitylene, whom they used to call the Scourge of the Orators ; the sixth was a Neapolitan, a philosopher of the Academy, a disciple and favourite of Melanthius, of Ehode ; the seventh was a Milesian, a political writer ; the eighth was a statuary.

LIFE OF ARISTIPPUS.

I. Aribtipptjs was by birth a Cyrenean, but he came to -Athens, as ^schines says, having been attracted thither by the fame of Socrates.

II. He, having professed himself a Sophist, as Phanias, of Eresus, the Peripatetic, informs us, was the first of the pupils of Socrates who exacted money from his pupils, and who sent money to his master. And once he sent him twenty drach- mas, but had them sent back again, as Socrates said that his daemon would not allow him to accept them ; for, in fact, he was indignant at having them offered to him. And Xenophon used to hate him ; on which account he wrote his book against pleasure as an attack uplon Aristippus, and assigned the main argument to Socrates. Theodorus also, in his Treatise on Sects, has attacked him severely, and so has Plato in his book on the Soul, as we have mentioned in another place.

III. But he was a man very quick at adapting himself to

a

8*2 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHEBa

eveiy kind of place, and time, and person,* and he eBsSLy supported every change of fortune. For which reason he was in greater favour with Dionysius than any of the others, as he always made the hest of existing circumstances. For he enjoyed what was hefore him pleasantly, and he did not toil to procure himself the enjoyment of what was not present. On which account Diogenes used to call him the king's dog» And Timon used to snarl at him as too luxurious, speaking somewhat in this fashion : —

Like the effeminate mind of Aristippna,

Who, aa he said, by tonch could judge of falsehood.

They say that he once ordered a partridge to be bought for him at the price of fifty drachmas ; and when some one blamed him, " And would not you," said he, " have bought it if it had cost an obol ?" And when he said he would, " Well," replied Aristippus, '' fifty drachmas are no more to me.** Dionysius once bade him select which he pleased of three beautiful courtesans ; and he carried off all three, saying that even Paris did not get any good by prefering one beauty to the rest. However, they say, that when he had carried them as far as the vestibule, he dismissed them; so easily inclined was he to select or to disregard things. On which account Strato, or, as others will have it, Plato, said to him, " You are the only man to whom it is given to wear both a whole cloak and rags/* Once when Dionysius spit at him, he put up with it ; and when some one found fault with him, he said, '* Men endure being wetted by the sea in order to catch a tench, and shall not I endure to be sprinkled with wine to catch a sturgeon ?"

IV. Once Diogenes, who was washing vegetables, ridiculed him as he passed by, and said, *' If you had learnt to eat these vegetables, you would not have been a slave in the palace of a tyrant." But Aristippus replied, •* And you, if you had known how to behave among men, would not have been washing vegetables." Being asked once what advantage he had derived from philosophy, he said, ** The power of associating confidently

* This is exacUy the character that Horace gives of him : — Omnis Aristippum decuit color et status et res ; Tentantem majora^ fere prsesentibus aequum. —

JSjp, I 28, 24.

ARISnPPUS. 83

with every body." When he was reproached for living extra- Tagantly, he replied, *' If extravagance had been a £9iult, it vroald not have had a place in the festivals of the Gods." At another time he was asked what advantage philosophers had over other men ; and he replied, '' If all the laws should be abrogated, we should still Hve in the same manner as we do now." Once, when Dionysius asked him why the philosophers haunt the doors of the rich, but the rich do not frequent those of the philosophers, he said, " Because the first know what they want, but the second do not."

On one occasion he was reproached by Plato for living in an

expensive way ; and he replied, '* Does not Dionysius seem to

you to be a good man ?" And as he said that he did ; " And

yet," said he, " he Hves in a more expensive manner than I

do, 80 that there is no impossibility in a person's living both

expensively and well at the same time." He was asked once

in what educated men are superior to uneducated men ; and

answered, '* Just as broken horses are superior to those that

are unbroken." On another occasion he was going into the

house of a courtesan, and when one of the young men who

were vdth him blushed, he said, " It is not the going into such

a house that is bad, but the not being able to go out.*' Once a

man proposed a riddle to him, and said, " Solve it.** " Why,

you silly fellow," said Aristippus, " do you wish me to loose

what gives us trouble, even while it is in bonds ?** A saying

of his was, " that it was better to be a beggar than an ignorant

person ; for that a beggar only wants money, but an ignorant

person wants humanity." Once when he was abused, he was

going away, and as his adversary pursued him and said, ** Why

are you going away ?'* " Because," said he, " you have a license

for speaking ill ; but I have another for declining to hear ill.**

When some one said that he always saw the philosophers at

the doors of the rich men, he said, " And the physicians also

are always seen at the doors of their patients ; but still no

one would choose for this reason to be an invalid rather than

a physician.**

Once it happened, that when he was sailing to Corinth, he was overtaken by a violent storm ; and when somebody said, '^ We common individuals are not afraid, but you philosophers are behaving like cowards ;" he said, " Very likely, for we have not both of us the same kind of souls at stake." Seeing

G 2

84 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHEBS.

m

a man who prided himself on the variety of his learning and Accomplishments, he said, *' Those who eat most, and who take the most exercise, are not in hotter health than they ^ho eat just as much as is good for them ; and in the same way it is not those who know a great many things, but they who know what is useful who are yaluahle men." An orator had pleaded a cause for him and gained it, and asked him after- wards, "Now, what good did you ever get from Socrates?" " This good," said he, " that all that you have said in my behalf is true." He gave admirable advice to his daughter Aretes, teaching her to despise superfluity. And being asked by some one in what respect his son would be better if he received a careful education, he replied, " If he gets no other good, at aU events, when he is at the theatre, he will not be one stone sitting upon another." Once when some one brought his son to introduce to him, he demanded five hundred drachmas ; and when the father said, ** Why, for such a price as that I can buy a slave." " Buy him then," he replied, " and you will have a pair."

It was a saying of his that he took mbney from his acquaint- ances not in order to use it himself, but to make them aware in what they ought to spend their money. On one occasion, being reproached for having employed a hired advocate in a cause that he had depending : ** Why not," said he ; " when I have a dinner, I hire a cook." Once he was compelled by Dionysius to repeat some philosophical sentiment; " It is an absurdity," said he, ** for you to learn of me how to speak, and yet to teach me when I ought to speak :" and as Dionysius was offended at this, he placed him at the lowest end of the table ; on which Aristippus said, " You wish to make this place more respectable." A man was one day boasting of his skill as a diver ; " Are you not ashamed," said Aristippus, " to pride yourself on your performance of the duty of a dolphin ?" On one occasion he was asked in what respect a wise man is superior to one who is not wise ; and his answer was, ** Send them both 'naked among strangers, and you will find out." A man was boasting of being able to drink a great deal without being drunk ; and he said, '* A mule can do the very same thing." When a man reproached him for living with a mistress, he said, ** Does it make any difference whether one takes a house in which many others have lived before one, or one

ARISTIPPUS. 85

where no one has ever lived?" and his reprover said, "No.** " Well, does it make any difference whether one sails in a ship in which ten thousand people have sailed hefore one, or whether one sails in one in which no one has ever embarked ?** " By no means,*' said the other. *' Just in the same way/* said he» " it makes no difference whether one lives with a woman with whom numbers have lived, or with one with whom no one has lived.'* When a person once blamed him for taking money from his pupils, after having been himself a pupil of Socrates : ** To be sure I do,** he replied, " for Socrates too, when some friends sent their com and wine, accepted a little, and sent the rest back; for he had the chief men of the Athenians for his purveyors. But I have only Eutychides, whom I have bought with money.** And he used to live with Lais the courtesan, as Sotion tells us in the Second Book of his Successions. Accordingly, when some one reproached him on her account, he made answer, ** I possess her, but I am not possessed by her; since the best thing is to possess pleasures without being their slave, not to be devoid of pleasures." When some one blamed him for the expense he was at about his food, he said, " Would you not have bought those things yourself if they had cost three obols ?'* And when the other admitted that he* would, " Then,*' said he, " it is not that I am fond of pleasure, but that you are fond of money.'* On one occasion, when Simus, the steward of Dionysius, was showing him a magnificent house, paved with marble (but Simus was a Phrygian, and a great toper), he hawked up a quantity of saliva and spit in his face ; and when Simus was indignant at this, he said, " I could not find a more suitable place to spit in."

Charondas, or as some say, PhsBdon, asked him once, "Who are the people who use perfumes ?" ** I do,** said he, " wretched man that I am, and the king of the Persians is still more wretched than I ; but, recollect, that as no animal is the worse for having a pleasant scent, so neither is a man ; but plague take those wretches who abuse our beautiful unguents.'* On another occasion, he was asked how Socrates' ^ed; and he made answer, ** As I should wish to die m3rself.'* When Polyxenus, the Sophist, came to his house and beheld his women, and the costly preparation that was made for dinner, and then blamed him for all this luxury, Aristippus a^ter a while said, " Can you stay with me to day ?** and when

86 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

Polyxenus consented, " Why then," said he, "did you blame me ? it seems that you blame not the luxury, but the expense of it." When his servant was once carrying some money along the road, and was oppressed by the weight of it (as Bion relates in his Dissertations), he said to him, "Drop what is beyond your strength, and only cariy what you can." Once he was at sea, and seeing a pirate yessel at a distance, he began to count his money ; and then he let it drop into the sea, as if unintentionally, and began to bewail his loss ; but others say that he said besides, that it was better for the money to be lost for the 'toke of Aristippus, than Aristippus for the s^e of his money. On one occasion, when Dionysius asked him why he had come, he said, to give others a share of what he had, and to receive a share of what he had not ; but some report that his answer was, " When I wanted wisdom, I went to Socrates ; but now that I want money, I have come to you." He found fault with men, because when they are at sales, they examine the articles offered very carefully, but yet they approve of men's lives without any examination. Though some attribute this speech to Diogenes. They say that once at a banquet, Dionysias desired all the guests to dance in purple garments ; but Plato refused, saying : —

** I could not wear a woman's robe, when I Was bom a man, and of a manly race."

But Aristippus took the garment, and when he was about to dance, he said very wittily : —

" She who is chaste, will not corrupted be By Bacchanalian revels."

He was once asking a favour of Dionysius for a friend, and when he could not prevail, he fell at his feet ; and when some one reproched him for such conduct, he said, '* It is not I who am to blame, but Dionysius who has his ears in his feet." When he was staying in Asia, and was taken prisoner by Artaphemes the Satrap, some one said to him, " Are you still cheerful and sanguine ?" " When, you silly fellow," he replied, " can I have more reason to be cheerful than now when I am on the point of conversing with Artaphemes ?" It used to be a saying of his, that those who had enjoyed the encyclic course of education, but who had omitted philosophy, were like the suitors of. Penelope ; for that they gained over Melantho and.

ARISTIPPUS. 87

Poljdora and the other maid-servants, and found it easier to do that than to marry the mistress. And Ariston said in like manner, that Ulysses \vhen he had gone to the shades below, saw and conversed with nearly all the dead in those regions, but could not get a sight of the Queen herself.

On another occasion, Aristippus being asked what were the

most necessary things for well-bom boys to learn, said, " Those

things which they will put in practice when they become men."

And when some one reproached him for having come from

Socrates to Dionysius, his reply was, " I went to Socrates

because I wanted instruction (raidsTixg), and I have come to

Dionysius because I want diversion (^aidt&i). As he had

made money by having pupils, Socrates once said to him,

"Where did you get so much?" and he answered, ••Where

you got a Htde." When his mistress said to him, •• I am in

the &mily way by you," he said, •• You can no more tell that,

than you could tell, after you had gone through a thicket,

which thorn had scratched you.'* And when some one blamed

him for repudiating his son, as if he were not really his, he

said, •• I know that phlegm, and I know that lice, proceed

from us, but still we cast them away as useless.*' One day,

when he had received some money from Dionysius, and Plato

had received a book, he said to a man who jeered him, *• The

fact is, money is what I want, and books what Plato wants."

When he was asked what it was for which he was reproached

by Dionysius, ''The same thing," said he, ''for which others

reproach me.** One day he asked Dionysius for some money,

who said, •• But you told me that a wise man would never be

in want ;** •• Give me some,** Aristippus rejoined, •• and then

we will discuss that point ;" Dionysius gave him some, ** Now

then,** said he, *• you see that I do not want money.** When

Dionysius said to him ; —

" For be who does frequent a tyrant's court,* Becomes bis slave, though free when first he came :**

He took him up, and replied : —

" That man is but a slave who comes as free." This story is told by Diocles, in his book on the Lives of the

* Plutarch, in his life of Pompey, attributes these Hnes to Sophocles, but does not mention the play in which they occurred.

88 LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS.

Philosophers ; hut others attribute the rejoinder to Plato. He ODce quarrelled Tvith JEschines, and presently afterwards said to him, " Shall we not <